ABSTRACT
With Shelley gone, Leigh Hunt sought solace in work. He settled down to his Examiner duties with vigour, going to the office on Saturdays and attempting to order his work and his finances with a new discipline. He bought fine clothes, presumably with some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s money, and declared himself very smart in his orange gloves, a blue frock coat and a splendid hat. Hunt had taken up the cudgels on behalf of Shelley, but he gave little support to John Keats and William Hazlitt. Keats suffered especially. Like Lord Byron, he saw truth in the vitriol, and his own anxieties and inner conflicts rose to the surface. He hated himself for his complicity in the rites of cheer, and hated Hunt for involving him. Vincent Novello increasingly had Hunt’s affections, being a source of both pleasure and money. At Novello’s home Hunt made friends of importance.
