ABSTRACT
Between Juvenilia and The Reflector, Hunt published little poetry, and even less poetry of note. He contributed occasional verse to the Poetical Register, began publishing poetry in The Examiner, and wrote a handful of songs which were set to music by John Whitaker and printed by Button and Whitaker. ‘Politics and Poetics’ is his first significant poem. It was first published in the short-lived Reflector, which was established in 1810 as a quarterly magazine published by John and edited by Leigh Hunt. Hunt writes in the Autobiography that Lamb, Dyer, Barnes, Mitchell, the Greek Professor Scholefield (all Christ Hospital men), together with Dr Aikin and his family wrote in it; and it was rising in sale every quarter, when it stopped at the close of the fourth number for want of funds. Its termination was not owing to the want of liberality in the payments.
