Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

ATTACKS ON COLERIDGE AND LEIGH HUNT. 133
was guilty. It began with a virulent and uncalled-for
attack upon Coleridge and his * Biographia Literaria/
which was of tenfold deeper guilt than the Chaldean
vision, holding up the poet, both in his works and his
person, to contempt. I am not aware that Coleridge
retaliated directly at all, though he was not himself
sparing in abuse while treating others, in the similar
channel of a review ; but his treatment of Blackwood
was magnanimous, as will be apparent hereafter.
Another shorter, still more virulent, and most unpardonable
assault upon what the writer dubbed " The
Cockney School of Poetry," signed with the initial Z,
was the most offensive of all ; and we are obliged to
allow that it was an attack for which there is no word
to be said, and which can only arouse our astonishment
and dismay that the hand of a gentleman could
have produced it, not to speak of a critic. Beside
these two productions, the Chaldee Manuscript was
innocence and good manners combined — though,
strangely enough, the other papers do not seem to
have offended the public, which was still raging over
the Lake School and the Byron controversy, and
hotly taking sides for and against these different
literary parties, with a fervour and venom of vitupera-
tion happily unknown to this day.
The other sufferers, however, were not silent. Leigh
Hunt—who on his part was as evil-tongued a critic as
could be found, so that there is little cause for pity,
except that such a man as Lockhart should ever have
been tempted to indulge in abuse so unworthy of himself—was
the special subject of attack in the " Cockney
School," and lost no time in making his complaint.
The summons of Mr Dalyell was ringing in the pub-