Stewarts, of the days of Charles the Profligate. It is not in the skill of delineat- and moving scenes of this work we have given no specimens, though we had 'By what affection led, we know not, certainly by no love of their odious tyranny or detestable vices, Mr. Leigh Hunt has been moved to illustrate the times of Charles II., by three volumes of supposed memoir. The author has been long known as a writer of distinguished talents and peculiar powers, but it remained to be seen what might be his fortune in a work of prose fiction, the test to which all the men of genius of the day seem anxious to apply to their respective capacities. In Sir Ralph Esher' the author has, as in his former writings, done more to prove the richness of his fancy, and the frequent felicity of his thoughts by brilliant escapes of genius, which every now and then sparkle and effervesce on the surface of his composition, than by any general views in the work, taken as a whole. Whether from some surfeit we have had of the age and persons he has selected for painting, or from some peculiarity in his mode of viewing them, we have derived but little pleasure from the main drift of his story; but there are few books which can boast more various beauties of detail, more exquisite little morsels of writing, than 'Sir Ralph Esher.' Some of his portraits are really fine pieces of art, such, for instance, as that of Lady Castlemaine. But a portion of these volumes which has pleased us most, is the account of the early readings of the hero his passion for the colossal romances of the day, and the charming way in which he is described as mixing them up with his own feelings, and applying the incidental characters to his own case, to say nothing of much shrewd and pleasant observation on the subject in general."-Examiner, 1832, p. 19. "His 'Sir Ralph Esher,' a novel of Charles II.'s time, is a work which is full of thought and fine painting of men and nature."-William Howitt: "Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets." Leigh Hunt.] The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt. 1832. [The preface extends to 58 and the poems to 361 pages. The motto is from Ariosto: "A bough, thin hung with leaves, is all my tree; Whether the Winter starve or spare it me." The contents of the volume are; The Story of Rimini-The Gentle Armour --Hero and Leander-The Feast of the Poets. Miscellaneous Pieces, viz. : Mahmoud-Lines Written in May-Alter et Idem-Power and GentlenessThe Panther-To T. L. H.-To J. H.-The Nun--Ariadne Waking-On Pomfret's." Choice"-A House and Grounds-A Picture of Naiads-The Dryads-The Ephydriads-The Cloud. Sonnets, viz.: To Thomas Barnes, Esq.-To the Grasshopper and the Cricket-To Kosciusko-To Stothard-Á Thought on The Nile-To-, M.D. (Southwood Smith?)-On a Lock of Milton's Hair. Translations, viz.: Theocritus; The Infant Hercules and the Serpents Catullus; Catullus's Return Home-Ovid; The Story of Cyllarus and Hylonome-Martial; Epitaph on Erotion-Walter de Mapes; The Jovial Priest's Confession--From the old English Drama of "Amyntas;" Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard-Milton; Plato's Archetypal Man-Petrarch; Contemplations of Death in the Bower of Laura--Andrea de Basso; Ode to a Dead Body-Ariosto; The Lover's Prison-Tasso: Ode to the Golden AgeRedi; Bacchus in Tuscany-D'Herbelot: A Blessed Spot-Clement Marot : On the Laugh of Madame D'Albret; Court Love-Lesson -Destouches; "In a year or two after the cessation of the Tatler [i.e. in 18331,* my collected verses were published by subscription; and as a reaction by this time had taken place in favour of political and other progress, and the honest portion of its opponents had not been unwilling to discover the honesty of those with whom they differed, a very handsome list of subscribers appeared in the Times newspaper, comprising names of all shades of opinion, some of my sharpest personal antagonists not excepted. In this edition of my 'Poetical Works' is to be found the only printed copy of a poem, the title of which (The Gentle Armour') has been a puzzle for guessers. It originated in curious notions of delicacy. The poem is founded on one of the French fabliaux, 'Les Trois Chevaliers et la Chemise.' It is the story of a knight, who, to free himself from the imputation of cowardice, fights against three other knights in no stouter armour than a lady's garment thus indicated. The late Mr. Way, who first introduced the story to the British public, and who was as respectable and conventional a gentleman, I believe, in every point of view, as could be desired, had no hesitation, some years ago, in rendering the French title of the poem by its (then) corresponding English words, "The Three Knights and the Smock;' but so rapid are the changes that take place in people's notions of what is decorous, that not only has the word 'smock,' of which it was impossible to see the indelicacy, till people were determined to find it been displaced since that time by the word shift; but even that harmless expression for the act of changing one garment for another, has been set aside in favour of the French word, 'chemise ;' and at length not even this word, it seems, is to be mentioned, nor the garment itself alluded to, by any decent writer! Such, at least, appears to have been the dictum of some customer, or customers, of the bookseller who published the poem. The title was altered to please these gentlemen; and in a subsequent edition of the works, the poem itself was withdrawn from their virgin eyes. "The terrible original title was the 'Battle of the Shift ;' and a more truly delicate story, I will venture to affirm, never was written. Charles Lamb thought the new title unworthy of its refinement, 'because it seemed ashamed of the right one." He preferred the honest old word. But this was the author of Rosamond Gray."-The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Revised Edition, with an Introduction by his Eldest Son. 1860. p. 375 "Those who have never read Mr. Hunt's poetry, we beseech, for their own sakes, now to read it. How many false impressions, conveyed by reviewers, of its peculiar characteristics, will be dispelled by one unprejudiced perusal! To those who have read it, we can only hold forth our own example. Attached, when we first chanced on his poems years ago, to other models, and imbued, perhaps, by the critical canons then in vogue, we were blind to many of the peculiar beauties that now strike upon our judgment. At certain times there are certain fashions in literature that bias alike reader and reviewer; and not to be in the fashion is not to be admired. But these--the conventional and temporary laws-pass away, and leave us at last only open to the permanent laws of Nature and of Truth. The taste of one age often wrongs us, but the judgment of the next age corrects the verdict. Something in the atmosphere dulls for a day the electricity between the true poet and the universal ear; but the appeal is recognised at last! "You may apply to the colouring of his genius the sweet and most musical lines with which he has described a summer's evening. 'Warm, but not dim, a glow is in the air, The softened breeze comes smoothing here and there ; It is in the heroic "In the poem of 'Hero and Leander' we seem to recognise Dryden himself, but Dryden with a sentiment, a delicacy, not his own. metre that the mechanical art of our poet is chiefly visible. He comprehends its music entirely: he gives to it its natural and healthful vigour; and the note of his manly rhyme rings on the ear-- 'Loud as a trumpet with a silver sound.' * There must be a mistake here. Mr. Hunt's farewell to the readers of The Tatler appeared on the 13th February, 1832, and the title-page of the "Poetical Works" is dated 1832. His use of the triplet, if frequent, is almost always singularly felicitous. Let us take the following lines in the 'Hero and Leander' as an example : 'Meantime the sun had sunk; the hilly mark Across the straits mixed with the mightier dark, Were hushed, the fisher's call, the birds, the trees; All but the washing of the eternal seas.' } "His power of uniting, in one line simplicity and force is very remarkable, as in the following: 'Hero looked out, and, trembling, augured ill, And in the strong homeliness of the image below, 'So might they now have lived, and so have died; "The volume before us contains some translations, which are not easily rivalled in the language. The tone of the original is transfused into the verse even more than the thought is; and the poems, which, while original in themselves, emulate the Greek spirit of verse (such as the Ephydriads) are bathed in all the lustrous and classic beauty that cling to the most lovely and the most neglected of the Mythological creations. Nor are the domestic and household feelings less beautifully painted than the graceful and starred images of remote antiquity. "From the poems that enrich this volume we go back to its preface-an elaborate and skilful composition, full of beauties of expression, and opening a thousand original views into the science of criticism. We recommend it as a work to be studied by all who write, and all who (a humbler, yet more laborious task) have to judge of verse. In criticism, indeed, few living writers have equalled those subtle and delicate compositions which have appeared in the Indicator, the Tatler, and the earlier pages of the Examiner. And, above all, none have excelled the poet now before our own critical bar in the kindly sympathies with which, in judging of others, he has softened down the asperities, and resisted the caprices, common to the exercise of power. In him the young poet has ever found a generous encourager no less than a faithful guide. None of the jealousy or the rancour ascribed to literary men, and almost natural to such literary men as the world has wronged, have gained access to his true heart, or embittered his generous sympathies. Struggling against no light misfortunes, and no common foes, he has not helped to retaliate upon rising authors the difficulty and the depreciation which have burdened his own career: he has kept, undimmed and unbroken, through all reverses, that first requisite of a good critic-a good heart."-New Monthly Magazine. 1833. Article: " Leigh Hunt's Poetry," by E. L. Bulwer.] The True Sun" Daily Review; a Series of Critical Notices of New Books, Magazines, &c. Commencing 16th August, and ending 26th December, 1833. ["I received an invitation to write in the new evening paper called the True Sun. I did so; but nothing of what I wrote has survived, believe; nor can I meet with the paper anywhere, to ascertain. Perhaps an essay or two originated in its pages, to which I cannot trace it. I was obliged for some time to be carried every morning to the True Sun office in a hackney-coach. I there became intimate with Laman Blanchard, whose death [about ten years back] was such a grief and astonishment to his friends. They had associated anything but such end with his witty, joyous, loving, and beloved nature. But the watch was overwound, and it ran suddenly down. What bright eyes he had! and what a kindly smile! How happy he looked when he thought you were happy; or when he was admiring somebody; or relating some happy story!"-The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Revised Edition, with an Introduction by his Eldest Son. 1860. p. 376. The above have never been reprinted. The compiler of this list cut them from the True Sun, from day to day, as they appeared, and has had them bound up in a couple of volumes, forming altogether above 400 pages. The following is the original announcement of the articles : "We are proud to call the attention of our readers to the article in to-day's paper, headed The True Sun Daily Review.' We know that they will-be they readers of what class they may, be their tastes as various as their facesrejoice with us in the reappearance in our columns of that old familiar indicative 'hand,' which has dispensed so many pleasures among mankind, dug up so many fine truths for them, and fought so many patriotic battles-unprofitably, save to the world. We may claim to be pardoned for saying this, and for being proud of the friendly and active alliance of such a hand."-The Daily True Sun. August, 1833. The following are the subjects of some of the criticisms:-Mrs. JordanOld Bailey Experience-Cruickshank-Drummond of Hawthornden-Thomas Paine-Major's Gallery of Pictures - Howitt's "Priestcraft"-The Sabbath-Health-Tales from Chaucer -America-Illustrations of Scott-The Magazines Fox's Repository-Christopher North on the Greek AnthologyTait's and Johnstone's Magazines-Hartley Coleridge's Lives of Northern Worthies-Sir J. Herschel's Address to the Windsor and Eton LibraryNational Education-Galt's Poems-Keightley's Popular Fictions-Mudie on Birds-Burns-D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature"-The Glove Trade-The Frolics of Puck-Archery-Purcell-Teaching Spelling-Cowden Clarke's "Adam the Gardener," and Howitt's "Book of the Seasons"-Grant Thornburn-"The Coquette"-Dolby's "Literary Cyclopædia"-Rogers's PoemsGalt's Autobiography-Cooper the Novelist-Spectacle-ana-The Duchess of Berri-Paul de Kock's "The Modern Cymon"-Trees-Christopher North on the Greek Poets-Tour in Greece-"Moments of Idleness" "Hampden in the 19th Century"-"Tom Cringle's Log"-Retzsch-Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame"--Parnell and Pomfret Marshal Ney-Rammohun RoyRichard Carlile on Insanity-Arabia-Miss Landon-The Jew's Harp-The "Amulet"-The Oriental Annual-Modern Wines-Pronunciation of Classic Names-The Laws of Population, Mortality, &c.] The Indicator, and The Companion; A Miscellany for the Fields and the Fire-side. 2 Vols. 1834. [The following is the Introduction, which explains the nature of this selection from the original Indicator and Companion. "The Indicator, a series of papers originally published in weekly numbers, having been long out of print, and repeated calls having been made for it among the booksellers, the author has here made a selection, comprising the greater portion of the articles, and omitting such only as he unwillingly put forth in the hurry of periodical publication, or as seemed otherwise unsuited for present publication, either by the nature of their disquisitions, or from containing commendatory criticisms now rendered superfluous by the reputation of the works criticised. "The Companion, a subsequent publication of the same sort, has been treated in the like manner. "The author has little further to say, by way of advertisement to these volumes, except that both the works were written with the same view of inculcating a love of nature and imagination, and of furnishing a sample of the enjoyment which they afford; and he cannot give a better proof of that enjoyment, as far as he was capable of it, than by stating, that both were written during times of great trouble with him, and both helped him to see much of that fair play between his own anxieties and his natural cheerfulness, of which an indestructible belief in the good and the beautiful has rendered him perhaps not undeserving. "London, December 6, 1833." "This is a selection from the delightful papers in the Indicator and the Companion. No writer has a finer perception of the beautiful than Leigh Hunt, and he makes us see old things with new and loving eyes. No subject is barren under his hands; he 'Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, And we may go on, happy is he 'That can translate the stubbornness of fortune No falling off can be traced in Mr. Leigh Hunt's writing; on the contrary, Leigh Hunt's London Journal. To Assist the Inquiring, Animate the Struggling, and Sympathise with All. 2 vols. folio. ["The London Journal was a miscellany of essays, criticism, and passages from books. Towards the close it was joined by the Printing Machine,' but the note which it had struck was of too æsthetical a nature for cheap readers in those days: and [in 1836], after attaining the size of a goodly folio double volume it terminated. I have since had the pleasure of seeing the major part of the essays renew their life, and become accepted by the public, in a companion volume to the 'Indicator,' entitled the Seer.' But the reputation, as usual, was too late for the profit. Neither the 'Seer' nor the 'Indicator' are mine. The 'Seer' does not mean a prophet, or one gifted with second sight, but an observer of ordinary things about him, gifted by his admiration of nature with the power of discerning what everybody else may discern by a cultivation of the like secret of satisfaction. I have been also pleased to see that the London Journal maintains a good, steady price with my old friends, the bookstalls. It is in request, I understand, as a book for sea-voyages; and assuredly its large, triple-columned, eight hundred pages, full of cheerful ethics, of reviews, anecdotes, legends, table-talk, and romances of real life, make a reasonable sort of library for a voyage, and must look pleasant enough, lying among the bulky things upon deck. "Among the contributors to the London Journal was a young friend, who, had he lived, would have been a very distinguished man. I allude to Egerton Webbe, a name well-known in private circles of wit and scholarship. He was a wit of the first water, a scholar writing elegant Latin verse, a writer of the best English style, having philological reason for every word he uttered--a reasoner, a humorist, a politician, a cosmopolite, a good friend, brother, and son; and to add a new variety to all this, he inherited from his grandfather, the celebrated glee-composer, a genius for musical composition, which in his person took a higher and wider range, being equally adapted for pathos and comedy. He wrote a most humorous farce, both words and music; and he was the author of a strain of instrumental music in the funeral scene of the 'Legend of Florence,' which was taken by accomplished ears for a dirge of some Italian master. Unfortunately, like Beethoven, he was deaf; but so delightful was his conversation, that I was glad to strain my voice for it the whole evening to such an extent, that, on his departure, my head would run round with dizziness, and I could not go to sleep. Had he lived, he would have enriched a family too good and trusting for the ordinary course of the world. He died and their hopes and their elder lives went with him, till they all meet somewhere again. Dear Egerton Webbe! How astonished was Edward Holmes, the best musical critic which this nation has produced, to see him come into his house with his young and blooming face, after reading essays and metaphysics, which he took for those of some accomplished old gentleman!"-The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Revised Edition, with an Introduction by his Eldest Son. 1860. p. 381. The following is the Address in the first number:-"The object of this publication, which is devoted entirely to subjects of miscellaneous interest, unconnected with politics, is to supply the lovers of knowledge with an English Weekly Paper, similar in point of size and variety, to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, but with a character a little more southern and literary. The acuteness and industry of the writers of the Edinburgh Journal are understood to have obtained a very large demand for their work; the illustrated information of the Penny Magazine, with its admirable wood-cuts, has obtained for it one still more stupendous; and though we may not be able to compete with either of these phenomena, and, indeed, are prepared to be content with a sale of reasonable enormity, yet there still remain gaps in the supplics of public intellect, which its consumers would willingly see filled up; and one of these we propose to accommodate. It may briefly be described as consisting in a want of something more connected with the ornamental part of utility,—with the art of extracting pleasurable ideas from the commonest objects, and the participations of a scholarly experience. In the metropolis there are thousands of improving and enquiring minds, capable of all the elegancies of intellectual enjoyment, who, for want of educations worthy of them, are deprived of a world of pleasures, in which they might have instructed others. We hope to be read by these. In every country town there is always a knot of spirits of this kind, generally young men, who are known, above others, for their love of books, for the liberality of their sentiments, and their desire to be acquainted with all that is going forward in connection with the graces of poetry and the T |