SOURCE: "Leigh Hunt and the Laureateship," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LV, No. 4, October, 1958, pp. 603-15.

In the following essay, Fogle examines Hunt's quest for the poet laureateship in light of Hunt's lifelong political rhetoric and writings concerning the royal family.

Twice during Leigh Hunt's career, there seemed, at least to him, a fair chance that he might be named poet laureate of England. Three times during his adult career as a man of letters, the office fell vacant: in 1813 on the death of Pye, in 1843 on the death of Southey, and in 1850 on the death of Wordsworth. It was of course manifestly impossible that the Prince Regent in 1813 would have offered the post to a journalist relatively little-known as a poet (for Hunt's best-known poems all come later) who was at the moment confined to Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Surrey after a conviction for libeling the Regent...