Leigh Hunt
The facts about Leigh Hunt's life and work are thin on named publications, so this biography draws only on what the record directly supports.
Hunt was born on 19 October 1784 in Southgate and was educated at Christ's Hospital. He went on to work across a wide range of overlapping roles — poet, essayist, literary critic, journalist, autobiographer, translator, and writer more broadly. His work made use of both the English and Italian languages.
As a journalist and literary critic, Hunt engaged with the written culture of his period through several distinct modes of expression. He produced poetry, essays, autobiography, and translation, carrying on these various activities across his adult career. He held citizenship first in the Kingdom of Great Britain and later in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Southgate, where he was born, and Putney, where he died, mark the geographical poles of his English life.
Hunt died on 28 August 1859 in Putney. His work as a poet, critic, essayist, journalist, autobiographer, and translator, conducted in both English and Italian, extended across several decades of the nineteenth century.
Quotes by Leigh Hunt
Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities, the meeting of extremes around a corner.
Tears and sorrows and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life: some for our manifest good, and ail, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed; – for our final and greatest good.
Green little vaulter, in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole noise that’s heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev’n the bees lag at the summoning brass.
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights, What is ’t ye do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles? How do ye vary your vile days and nights? How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites, And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles.
It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is gone.
Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in: Say I’m weary, say I’m sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I’m growing old, but add – Jenny kissed me!