SOURCE: Blainey, Ann. “The Pit of Talent.” In her The Farthing Poet: A Biography of Richard Hengist Horne 1802-84. A Lesser Literary Lion, pp. 82-95. London: Longmans, 1968.

In the following excerpt, Blainey examines the success of Horne's plays The Death of Marlowe and Gregory VII, and considers his friendship with literary figures Leigh Hunt and Thomas Carlyle.

The New Year of 1838 brought no comfort: another year and another birthday, his thirty-fifth. Only five years off official middle age, he felt he had achieved so little. Physically he already seemed middle-aged: his face had acquired that ageless-aged look it was to keep for another twenty years. Bald on the top of his head, his auburn curls falling to his collar, the trained moustachios drooping elegantly, the heavy-lidded blue eyes more sadly spaniel-like than ever: the effect was calculatedly Shakespearian, he looked a poet. His small body, inclined to paunchy...