ABSTRACT
Leigh Hunt had been busy in writing verses, and with more leisure his output multiplied. Old poems were reworked, new ones written. Entering a literary competition in the Monthly Preceptor, he won first place for a translation of Horace, his prize qualified by the advice that to become a good writer Master Leigh Hunt needed only ‘a little arrangement, and to study the art of arts, the art to blot’. Hunt grew an infant beard and went to literary parties. He was paraded by his jubilant father as ‘the example of the young gentleman and the astonishment of the young ladies’. But beneath the fame, the shy schoolboy still existed. The face which looks out from two youthful portraits by Bowyer and by Jackson is vulnerable. Its contours are a child’s, with plump cheeks, a high forehead, firm dark brows, an overfull, petulant mouth, and brilliant brown eyes.
