"Mr. Hunt, who to the prating pertness of the parrot, the chattering impudence of the magpie--to say nothing of the mowling malice of the monkey--adds the hissiness of the bill-pouting gander, and the gobble-bluster of the bubbly-jock--to say nothing of the forward valour of the brock or badger--threatens death and destruction to all writers of prose or verse, who shall dare to say white is the black of his eye, or that his book is not like a vase lighted up from within with the torch of truth ... Frezeland Bantam is the vainest bird that attempts to crow; and by and by our feverish friend comes out into the light, and begins to trim his plumage! His toilet over he basks on the ditch side, and has not the smallest doubt in the world that he is a Bird of Paradise."
The _Literary Gazette_ joined in the hue-and-cry against "the pert vulgarity and miserable low-mindedness of Cockney-land," against "the disagreeable, envious, bickering, hating, slandering, contemptible, drivelling and be-devilling wretches."[496] _Blackwood's_ of February, 1830, in a review of Moore's _Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, satirizes the conversational habits of the Cockneys "who all keep chattering during meals and after them, like so many monkeys, emulous and envious of each other's eloquence, and pulling out with their paws fetid observations from their cheek-pouches, which are nuts to them, though instead of kernel, nothing but snuff."
Not only did the articles in _Blackwood's_ cease after this last, but in 1834 a full and complete apology was tendered Hunt by Christopher North:
"And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt. Their friendship was honorable to both, for it was as disinterested as sincere; and I hope Gurney will let a certain person in the City understand that I treat his offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt's _London Journal_ with disdain. If he has anything to say against us or that gentleman, either conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other channel; and I promise him a touch and taste of the crutch. He talks to me of _Maga's_ desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian--nay, a man--his heart and his head would tell him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever--and that Leigh Hunt has more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods."[497]