be got of it. Leigh Hunt's offence is in the ordinary books
rather undervalued. That he (or his contributor) called the Prince
Regent, as is commonly said, "a fat Adonis of fifty" (the exact words
are, "this Adonis in loveliness is a corpulent man of fifty") may have
been the chief sting, but was certainly not the chief legal offence.
Leigh Hunt called the ruler of his country "a violator of his word, a
libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties,
the companion of demi-reps, a man who had just closed half a century
without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect
of posterity." It might be true or it might be false; but certainly
there was then not a country in Europe where it would have been allowed
to be said of the chief of the state. And I am not sure that it could be
said now anywhere but in Ireland, where considerably worse things were
said with impunity of Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan. At any rate
the brothers were prosecuted and fined five hundred pounds each, with
two years' imprisonment. The sentence was carried out; but Leigh Hunt's
imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane Gaol was the merest farce of
incarceration. He could not indeed go beyond the prison walls. But he
had a comfortable suite of rooms which he was permitted to furnish and
decorate just as he liked; he was allowed to have his wife and family
with him; he had a tiny garden of his own, and free access to that of
the prison; there was no restriction on visitors, who brought him
presents just as they chose; and he became a kind of fashion with the
Opposition. Jeremy Bentham came and played at battledore and shuttlecock
with him--an almost appalling idea, for it will not do to trust too
implicitly to Leigh Hunt's declaration that Jeremy's object was to
suggest "an improvement in the constitution of shuttlecocks." The
_Examiner_ itself continued undisturbed, and except for the "I can't get
out" feeling, which even of itself cannot be compared for one moment to
that of a modern prisoner condemned to his cell and the
exercising-ground, it is rather difficult to see much reason for Leigh
Hunt's complaints. The imprisonment may have affected his health, but it
certainly brought him troops of friends, and gave him leisure to do not
only his journalist's work, but things much more serious. Here he wrote
and published his first poem since the Juvenilia, "A Feast of the Poets"
(not much of a thing), and here