The young Hunt began early to write--finding his way into journalism of all sorts; his name associated sooner or later with _The News_, and dramatic critiques; with the _Examiner_, the _Reflector_, the _Indicator_, the _Companion_, and the _Liberal_--for which latter he dragged his family down into Italy at the instance of Byron or Shelley, or both. That _Liberal_ was intended to astonish people and make the welkin ring; but the Italian muddle was a bad one, the _Liberal_ going under, and an ugly quarrel setting in; Hunt revenging himself afterward by writing _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_,--a book he ultimately regretted: he was never strong enough to make his bitterness respected. Honeyed words became him better; and these he dealt out--wave upon wave--on all sorts of unimportant themes. Thus, he writes upon “Sticks”; and again upon “Maid-servants”; again on “Bees and Butterflies” (which is indeed very pretty); and again “Upon getting up of a cold morning”--in which he compassionates those who are haled out of their beds by “harpy-footed furies”--discourses on his own experience and sees his own breath rolling forth like smoke from a chimney, and the windows frosted over.
“Then the servant comes in: ‘It is very cold this morning, is it not?’ ‘Very cold, sir.’ ‘Very cold, indeed, isn’t it?’ ‘Very cold, indeed, sir.’ ‘More than usually so, isn’t it, even for this weather?’ ‘Why, sir, I think it _is_, sir.’… And then the hot water comes: ‘And is it quite hot? And isn’t it too hot?’ And what ‘an unnecessary and villainous custom this is of shaving.’”
Whereupon he glides off, in words that flow as easily as water from a roof--into a disquisition upon flowing beards--instancing Cardinal Bembo and Michelangelo, Plato and the Turks. Listen again to what he has to say in his _Indicator_ upon “A Coach”:--
“It is full of cushions and comfort; elegantly colored inside and out; rich yet neat; light and rapid, yet substantial. The horses seem proud to draw it. The fat and fair-wigged coachman lends his sounding lash, his arm only in action, and that but little; his body well set with its own weight. The footman, in the pride of his nonchalance, holding by the straps behind, and glancing down sideways betwixt his cocked hat and neckcloth, standing swinging from East to West upon his springy toes. The horses rush along amidst their glancing harness. Spotted dogs leap about them, barking with a princely superfluity of noise. The hammer cloth trembles through all its fringe. The paint flashes in the sun.”