oneyed
obligations, always, though loudly, half jocosely proclaimed, and his
ostentatious wilfulness in the humouring of that or any other theme on
which he cared for the time to expatiate,[165] had so often seemed to
Dickens to be whimsical and attractive that, wanting an "airy quality"
for the man he invented, this of Hunt occurred to him; and "partly for
that reason, and partly, he has since often grieved to think, for the
pleasure it afforded to find a delightful manner reproducing itself
under his hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often making the
character speak like his old friend." This apology was made[166] after
Hunt's death, and mentioned a revision of the first sketch, so as to
render it less like, at the suggestion of two other friends of Hunt. The
friends were Procter (Barry Cornwall) and myself; the feeling having
been mine from the first that the likeness was too like. Procter did not
immediately think so, but a little reflection brought him to that
opinion. "You will see from the enclosed," Dickens wrote (17th of March
1852), "that Procter is much of my mind. I will nevertheless go through
the character again in the course of the afternoon, and soften down
words here and there." But before the day closed Procter had again
written to him, and next morning this was the result. "I have again
gone over every part of it very carefully, and I think I have made it
much less like. I have also changed Leonard to Harold. I have no right
to give Hunt pain, and I am so bent upon not doing it that I wish you
would look at all the proof once more, and indicate any particular place
in which you feel it particularly like. Whereupon I will alter that
place."

Upon the whole the alterations were considerable, but the radical wrong
remained. The pleasant sparkling airy talk, which could not be mistaken,
identified with odious qualities a friend only known to the writer by
attractive ones; and for this there was no excuse. Perhaps the only
person acquainted with the original who failed to recognize the copy,
was the original himself (a common case); but good-natured friends in
time told Hunt everything, and painful explanations followed, where
nothing was possible to Dickens but what amounted to a friendly evasion
of the points really at issue. The time for redress had gone. I yet well
remember with what eager earnestness, on one of these occasions, he
strove to set Hunt up again in his own esteem. "Separate in you