. . .Hunt when the young poet’s work was shown him. Both were eager in its praises, and in questions concerning the person and character of the author. Cowden Clarke at Hunt’s request brought Keats to call on him soon afterwards, and has left a[Pg 34] vivid account of their pleasant welcome and conversation. The introduction seems to have taken place early in the spring of 1816[17]. Keats immediately afterwards became intimate in the Hampstead household; and for the next year or two Hunt’s was the strongest intellectual influence to which he was subject. So far as opinions were concerned, those of Keats had already, as we have seen, been partly formed in boyhood by Leigh Hunt’s writings in the Examiner. Hunt was a confirmed sceptic as to established creeds, and supplied their place with a private gospel of cheerfulness, or system of sentimental optimism, inspired partly by his own sunny temperament, and partly by the hopeful doctrines of eighteenth-century . . . Read More