John Hobart Caunter
[1] Hobart's family were Devonshire gentry; he was the second son of George Caunter of Staverton and Harriett Georgina, née Hutchings, of Dittisham.
[2] Hobart's father went to the East when his son was one year old[3] and became acting superintendent of Prince of Wales Island – today Penang, Malaysia.
His uncle Robert Sparke Hutchings, who became deacon at Dittisham in 1803 and rector in 1805, was his guardian; Hobart later described him as having "a heart perfection scarce could mend" and as being the source of "most of what I know".
He resigned from the Bombay establishment of the East India Company on 21 January 1814 and sailed back to England, stopping in Mauritius,[9][10][11] where his brother George Henry Caunter was a government official.
He goes on to state in the third person that he left England "chiefly induced by the dear idea of meeting a father, whom, since the earliest period of infancy, he had but once seen : — shortly after his arrival he heard of his death : — he discovered, much to his disappointment, nothing on the Continent of Asia to interest him".
The title poem contrasts his disillusionment with India with his recollection of England, "that lov'd Isle where Freedom's children dwell", and of his childhood, which is sketched in idyllic terms.
[22] He died at his residence at 21 Edward-street, Portman-square in Marylebone on 14 November 1851 "after a long and painful illness", having caught malaria fever,[23] and was laid to rest in All Souls' Cemetery in Kensal Green.
[30] A brief obituary in Harper's Magazine stated: "Eighteen years ago this gentleman's appearances in the world of ephemeral literature were frequent—and fairly successful.
"[31] Caunter was on intimate terms with authors such as Caroline Norton, with whom he edited The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée,[32] William Godwin,[d] Frances Sargent Osgood,[34] Basil Hall, John Galt and others.
[37] In this decade he helped Mary Shelley place her stories and articles in journals, and he is likely to have assisted her with her unfinished biographical memoir of her father, Life of William Godwin.
It revolves around St. Leon, a French nobleman of fallen fortune living near Madrid, who receives from supernatural spirits the ingredients for creating gold and a potion of eternal life.
He is forbidden from divulging the source of his new-found wealth, and it is precisely his secrecy that attracts the suspicion and hostility of family members, friends and the Spanish Inquisition.
[40] It is a picaresque novel with Christian theology mixed in about James (Jemmy) Dillon, a London youth from a dysfunctional background who is orphaned and is taught by an elderly protectress to believe that he is predestined to heaven.
Dillon embarks on a career as a wandering thief, and a gipsy girl from an equally dysfunctional background, Phœbe Burrows, becomes his romantic interest.
According to the author's preface, the poem's groundwork was provided by an encounter he had on arriving in Mauritius on his way back to England from India: "there was an old man, with silvery locks, residing on a small estate a few miles distant from the town of Port Louis, who was an object of universal sympathy, having become deranged in consequence of the loss of an only daughter.
The Calcutta Historical Society wrote in 1923: "... Caunter's account of his alleged wanderings ... is based in the primary degree upon notes and other information furnished by William Daniell himself.
"For a novel of spirit, crowded with adventures, and written con amore, we commend "The Fellow Commoner"", wrote The Court Magazine,[64] whereas The Monthly Review, besides taking issue with Caunter's representation of a religious heresy, opined: "The story may entertain the lovers of the marvellous, and confirm them more and more in their disrelish for rational or elegant literature; but this negative praise is the utmost we can afford.
"[65] The Poetry of the Pentateuch (1939), in which Caunter argues that specific principles of prosody and poetic construction are at work in the Hebrew of the Pentateuch, was praised in a review by Chambers' Edinburgh Journal: "Mr Caunter ... [leaves] nothing further to be wished for with respect to grave critical commentary, while, at the same time, the well-known charms of the author's style ... render the work an acceptable one to the mere lover of elegant literature.
"[66] The Monthly Chronicle considered Caunter's study to display "an extent of erudition and a severe refinement of taste, which have rarely been equalled by any writer within the memory of the living generation.
Critics at the time of publication wrote: "if he has not equalled a poem which ranks among the first in the English language, he has at least done that which ought to establish his reputation" (Morning Post, 15 April 1830); "A little romantic tale, with few incidents, and those chiefly of the domestic kind, but abundance of gentle sentiment and charming scenery" (Monthly Magazine, June 1830); "The work before us has a touching interest in its plot, and, generally speaking, a smoothness and sweetness of versification ... Its faults are — too much diffuseness, too great an amplitude of description, too frequent an intrusion of weak similes and prosaic lines ... and a vein of moralizing" (La Belle Assemblee, July 1830).
[68] The Literary Gazette decried Caunter's An Inquiry into the History and Character of Rahab (1850) as an "Injurious literal interpretation of Scripture" ("the reverend author appears to have fallen desperately in love with "Rahab, the Harlot" of Scripture; and she has led him a pretty dance"), whereas The Christian Witness, and Church Members' Magazine called it "a mass of good reading, calculated to interest, instruct, and edify" and stated: "The work throughout displays vigorous thinking, clothed in adequate expression.
[80] Among Hobart's other siblings was a younger brother, Richard McDonald Caunter (1798–1879), who was also a minister in the Church of England and wrote Attila, a Tragedy; and Other Poems (1832).
[81] However, at least several of the poems in this volume had previously appeared in various magazines and annuals, in versions differing to a greater or lesser extent from those in the book, as being from the hand of John Hobart Caunter.
