ABSTRACT
Leigh Hunt saw himself increasingly as a serious poet. As 1816 progressed and The Story of Rimini graced many a table, numerous others began to see him with such eyes. The first meeting between Hunt and John Keats took place a little later at the Vale of Health. Cowden Clarke, accompanying Keats, remembered how the young poet’s step quickened and his large expressive face glowed as they neared Hunt’s house. They became, in Hunt’s phrase, ‘intimate on the spot’. The first morning stretched into two more, Keats by a ‘familiar of the household’, and signalled many idyllic autumnal wanderings about the Heath and woods and other realms of gold. In the warming light of Hunt’s praise, Keats grew in confidence and poetic power. Poems flew from his pen with a facility that astonished observers. One parlour game at Hunt’s required the writing of a sonnet in a given time, with a timekeeper watching the clock.
