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journey, or thereabouts !) for reaching the | it, when I cannot see my own? This only Carlyles' Scottish home commended them selves to Hunt, for shortly after Carlyle writes again as follows:

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"Craigenputtoch: 29th October, 1833. "MY DEAR SIR, It is above two long months since the sight of your handwrit ing last gratified me at Dumfries. I was there in person, I remember; and read the kind, lively sheet, with a pipe and tumbler (of water), taking with double relish 'mine ease at my inn.' Why I have not answered sooner, looks foolish to tell. I waited for 'opportunities;' had but one and missed it by pressure of haste. A Reformed Parliament having now, by Heaven's grace, taken itself into retirement, there are henceforth no 'opportunities' possible. What can I do but what I should have done six weeks ago-make an opportunity? You shall pay thirteen pence and odds into His Majesty's impoverished Exchequer; and on this long sheet get talk from me enough :- soon, I hope, through the same channel, repaying with interest, to the Patriot King's benefit and mine.

"Your new situation looked so cheerful and peaceful, I almost fear to inquire what it has become. Chances and changes hardly leave us a week at rest in this fearful Treadmill of a World. The prophet said Make it like unto a wheel:' that is the kind of wheel I think we are made like unto. Meanwhile, ever as I figure you, that cheerful Tree, seen from your window, rises leafy and kind on me; I can hardly yet consent to have it leafless, and its kind whisper changed into a loud October howl. Be patient, and nestle near the chimney corner: there is a Spring coming. Nay, as I hope, one day, an Eternal Spring, when all that is dead and deserved not to die, shall bloom forth again, and live forever!

is clear for both of us, and for all true men: mix not, meddle not with the accursed thing there; swim stoutly, unwea riedly, if not towards landmarks on the Earth, then towards loadstars in the Heaven!' For the rest, as our good Scotch adage has it: Fear nothing earthly; there is ever Life for the Living.

"Since I wrote last, I have read all your Poems; the whole volume, I believe, without missing a line. If you knew with what heart-sickness I in general take up a volume of modern rhymes, and again with a silent curse of Ernulphus (for where were the good of making a spoken one?), lay it down, this fact would have more meaning for you. I find a genuine tone of music pervade all your way of thought: and utter itself, often in the gracefullest way, through your images and words: this is what I call your vocation to Poetry: so long as this solicits you, let it in all forms have free course. Well for him that hath music in his soul! Indeed, when I try Defining (which grows less and less my habit), there is nothing comes nearer my meaning as to poetry in general than this of musical thought: the unpardonable poetry is that where the word only has rhythm, and the Thought staggers along dislocated, hamstrung, or too probably rushes down altogether in shameful inanition. One asks, why did the unhappy mortal write in rhyme? That miserablest, decrepit Thought of his cannot even walk (with crutches); how in the name of wonder shall it dance? But so wags, or has wagged the world literary: till now, as I said, the very sight of dancing, drives an old stager like me quick into another street. More tolerable were the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, more tolerable is the London Directory, or McCulloch's Political Economy itself in the Day of Judgment than these! To come a little to particulars: we all thought your Rimini' very beautiful; sunny brilliancy and fate

"You must tell me more specially what you are doing. How prospers your Poem? Has the winter checked it; or is it al-ful gloom most softly blended, under an ready branching out to defy all storms both of outward and of inward weather?

"I see nothing here; scarcely more of you than a small wishing-cap' incidentally in Tait, and even that not lately. The Newspapers told us you had been engaged for the Theatrical department of some new Weekly True Sun: I can hardly imagine it, or you would have sent us an old paper, some day, by way of sign. The whole Literary world seems to me at this time to be little other than Chaos come again; how should I see your course in

atmosphere of tenderness, clear and bright like that of Italian Pictures. Beautifully painted; what it wanted to be a whole (and a picture) I believe you know better than 1. Leander 'also dwells with me; I think, that of his 'bursting into tears,' when he feels the waves about to beat him, is eminently natural. Thank you also for the two children's pieces; I remember, some seventeen years ago, seeing

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'taste,' and make much of it!); but the effect on me quite baulked the Reviewer. In the same Article, I first saw that pic ture of the mother ('a poor, a pensive, but a happy one'), singing as she mended her children's clothes, when they were all asleep; and never lost it, or am like to lose it.

then that I am still in the world of time. I fall asleep at last towards midnight, amid the Cannon vollies, shrieks and legislative debates, the laughter and tears, of whole generations; for it is mainly History and Memoirs that I am reading. Now and then I shall perhaps write something, were it only for Prince Posterity. Thus you see us with winter at our door; but with huge stacks of fuel for the body's warmth, and for the mind's.

"A benevolent artist arrived lately, moreover, and rehabilitated the Piano: a little music is invaluable to me; better than sermons; winnows all the bitter dust out of me, and for moments makes me a good man.

"Pray think of us often; send now and then a Paper Messenger through the snow to us; to which I will not fail to reply.

"You shall now get quit of criticism; and hear a little about Craigenputtoch. For a long while, for eight or nine months almost, I have not been idle, yet fallow; writing not a word. A cynical extrava ganza of mine is indeed beginning to appear in Fraser's Magazine, and will continue there till you are all tired of it; but it was written wholly three years and a half ago it was some purpose of publishing it as a Book that brought me up to London. The last thing I wrote was a 'Count Cagliostro' in that extraordinary "I had innumerable questions to ask Periodical. When I shall put pen to you about matters literary in London. paper next is quite a problem. It ought Who manages the New Monthly Magazine to be when I have mended my ways; for now? For I see Bulwer has given it up nothing is so clear to me at present as long ago. What else is stirring? Pray that, outwardly and inwardly, I am all in tell me all you can think of, about such the wrong. I believe, one is hardly ever things: remember that here simply nothall in the right. Let us not mourn over ing reaches me of its own accord. Do that. But the strange thing at present you know an English Book, of date 1709, with me is the outward economic state of reprinted some twenty years ago, named Literature. Bookselling I apprehend to Apuleius' Golden Ass'? I fancied it a be as good as dead; without hope of re- translation of the old story; found it only vival, other than perhaps some galvanic an Imitation; full of questionable and of one; the question therefore arises, what unquestionable matter. It surprised me a next is to be done? A monstrous ques- little; especially as a Queen Anne pertion, which I think it may take two centu-formance. Farther, can you in few words ries to answer well. We, in the mean inform me who or what Sir Egerton time, must do the best we can. I have various projects, some of which may become purposes; I reckon, I may see you again in London by and by, for one thing. "This winter, at all events, and who knows how much more, we mean to spend here in the depths of the wilderness; divided from all men. Probably it may be a healthier winter; probably a happier and usefulier one. London I liked much, but the fogs and smoke were pestiferous; Edinburgh I find has left but a sad impression of hollowness and dulness on me: however, both might yield profit; and now a solitary winter, filled to overflowing with Books (for I have discovered a Library here), may be the profitablest of all. You, as a determined Book-moth, will appreciate my felicity, when you hear that I read some ten hours often at a sitting, divided by one, for a walk, which I take like physic. My head grows a perfect Revolt of Paris; nothing occurring to divert me; only the little Table-clock (poor little fellow) suggesting now and

Brydges is? Was his Censura' published in London? Much of it is perfectly useless for me; but the man has a small vein of real worth in him, and knows several things: the whining in his Prefaces struck me as the strangest. I still continue to wish much you would undertake the Life of Hazlitt;' though in my ignorance of the position matters stand in, to advise it were beyond my commission. Of all imaginable Books True Biographies are the best, the most essential. Hazlitt should not be forgotten. How I have lamented too that Porson studied, and drank, and rhymed, and went to the Devil, in vain! Peter Pindar too! We should have Lives of all such men not of the respectable' sort (far from it!); but of the true sort; painted to the life, as the men actually looked and were. There are hardly any readable Lives in our language except those of Players. One may see the reason too.

"But now, alas, has my time come. Accept in good part this flowing gossip.

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sun at this season -to rummage a hundred waggon-loads of contemptible marine stores, and weld out of them a malleable bar of any kind: it is such a job, now in my old days, as was never laid on me before; and what perhaps is worst of all, I intrinsically set no value on the beggarly enterprise, and have only one wish or hope about it, that now I had done with it, for

prospect that I shall be out of the First Part in May coming.

The two letters given below from Car-ever and a day! There is at last fair lyle to Hunt are short, but characteristic. The first, which is undated, runs as follows:

"I had thought of sending over to you for a loan of these two belligerent Captains; the more welcome to me is your gift, for which many kind thanks. I read the book over last night without rising (sedens pede in uno). What Aristotle and the Schlegels, or even the British Able Editors might say of it I know not; but to me it seemed to be a real song, and to go dancing with real heartiness and rhythm in a very handsome way, through a most complex matter. To me you are infinitely too kind; but it is a fault I will not quarrel with.

"Here are, too, wall-flowers, pledge of the Spring and of Hope. Why do you not come to see me? Depend upon it, whatever hinders is most probably a mistake or an absurdity.

"Jeffrey is in Town; he that was Francis and is My Lord, somewhat of the Francis having oozed out (I fear) in the interim. He will, with the greatest pleasure' come hither to meet you some night. Will you come? That is to say, will you actually come? Pray do not promise if it is to embarrass you.

"Mr. Moran, or any other friend of yours, may have half an hour of me, whenever he resolves to send up your card. If he wait till May he may find me (it is to be hoped) a much saner man than now — but he may take his choice. "I remain ever, dear Hunt, "Yours sincerely,

"T. CARLYLE.”

Readers of "Frederick II." may be interested in learning that in the eyes of its author the book was a "beggarly enterprise," and one in which he apparently took no interest whatever. I think there can be no doubt that this was the work alluded to, which he was struggling to push to a climax in the beginning of the year 1858. It was commenced in 1845, and the first volume appeared in the summer of 1858. Thirteen years of "contemptible overwhelming labor" would certainly be enough to account for the desperate condition of mind which the foregoing letter indicates. In another, he chafes at what he is pleased to call the

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Prussian Blockheadism" with which he is forced to cope at this period. One can sympathize with the feeling of intense relief and satisfaction which must have Iinspired him when he dashed off the concluding words of the sixth and last of the bulky volumes: "Adieu, good readers: bad also, adieu."

"Depend on the goodwill and perfect trust and esteem of both me and mine. know you do care for it.

"Always most truly,

"T. CARLYLE."

The second is headed, "Chelsea: 3 Leigh Hunt in reference to his voyage to "The sea is a grand sight," writes Jany. 1858."

“Dear Hunt, I received your kind note, which was very welcome to me. The handwriting on the cover was like the knock of an old friend at the door. By a later post the same day the magazine arrived, for which you must report me much obliged to Mr. Moran.

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Italy in the November of 1821, “a grand sight, but it becomes tiresome and melancholy a great monotonous idea least one thinks so when not happy." A bold undertaking in those days especially, to set out in the dreariest season of the year in company with an invalid wife, many small children, and the slenderest possible purse, in search of a home in a foreign land. But his sanguine and unpractical temperament would not allow him to see difficulties and drawbacks to a plan which was suggested and urged upon him by those for whom he had so strong

a regard. Byron was abroad, and from him came glowing accounts of the desirability of a scheme which he proposed namely, that Hunt should join himself and Shelley in setting up a Liberal publication in Italy, which, besides its supposed pecuniary advantages, was to ensure new adherents to the cause of liberty. He insisted also upon the entire adaptability of the Italian towns to the needs and requirements of Hunt and his family. Shelley, who had taken up his abode at Pisa, again and again urged his coming. Hunt longed to join them to see Italy was the dream of his life; and when, added to their entreaties, a doctor's opinion was given that the change might be in every way beneficial to Mrs. Hunt, he hesitated no longer. He afterwards admits "it was not very discreet (Autobiography) to go many hundred miles by sea in winter time with a large family; but a voyage was thought cheaper than a journey by land. It was by Shelley's advice that I acted, and I believe if he had recommended a balloon, I should have been inclined to try it." Shelley's counsel was characteristic; he says casually, as if the whole business was the merest trifle in the world, "Put your music and books on board a vessel, and you will have no more trouble." The babies little and big, the delicate wife, and the numberless impedimenta accompanying so serious an undertaking as the removal of a large family to such distant quarters, need not apparently be taken into account when the "books and music" were once safely deposited on board. I must also quote a sentence here from an unpublished letter written by Shelley to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, which I have in my collection, and which alludes to this matter; a word or two in the extract given indicating that the poet's advice, though not necessarily insincere, was nevertheless not so entirely disinterested as Hunt may have thought it. "You have perhaps heard," he writes to Hogg, "of my iniquity in seducing Hunt over to Italy. He is coming with all his children to Pisa: what pleasure it would give him, me, and all of us if you would follow his example; but law, that disease inherited from generation to generation, that canker in the birthright of our nature, that sieve through which our thoughts flow as fast as we pour them in, pens you in London at least for the greater part of the year."

Shelley was apparently fond of collect ing around him his friends and acquaintances, but in this matter of the Hunt

exodus it is evident, by the foregoing words, that he entertained some slight misgiving that the advantages to the latter might be qualified.

Of the sea voyage, its preposterous duration, its many vicissitudes, and its happy termination, we have an interesting record elsewhere.

The discovery, some time after the vessel had started, that she carried, besides sugar, a surreptitious cargo of gunpowder on board, which was being conveyed to Greece, was not calculated to soothe the nerves of the invalid, whose thoughts incessantly dwelt on the unpleasant vicinity of so undesirable a neighbor, until peril and storm inspired her with new, and not ill-founded apprehensions.

It seems to have been a strange and trying experience, even for those days of difficult locomotion. A collision occurred on the second day after leaving port, the jibboom being carried away and one of the bulwarks broken in, and the entire voyage appears to have been enlivened by gales the most tremendous the captain had ever witnessed. Incredible as it may seem to us in these days of rapid progression, December 22, more than a month after she left the Thames, saw the brig Jane putting into Dartmouth harbor for a pause and breathing space! Here Hunt and his family took final leave of her; and after spending some weeks at Plymouth, mainly on account of Mrs. Hunt's health, embarked again in the David Walter, of Carmarthen, which called for the family at Plymouth this time in more promising weather, and with better chances for a favorable termination to their travels. A glance at Hunt's graphic account of the troubles encountered on board will satisfy the reader that he had, in all probability, the best grounds in the world for the opinion quoted above that the sea can be "tiresome and melancholy" as well as grand.

The poet's appreciation of sunny skies and romantic scenery was unbounded; the very names of many of the Italian villages he describes as "alluring; " yet his spirit was at times weighed down with the difficult problem of ways and means, and he exerted himself to the full to work, as well as to admire, in order to satisfy the demands of his little family. To the picturesqueness and beauty of his surroundings we are doubtless indebted for much that is fine in his writings at this period. One recalls the beautiful and enthusiastic language he uses with reference to his entrance to the Mediterranean sea, and

the host of classical and romantic memo- | sorry for it - I mean the idea of rebuking ries which must have assailed him, crowd- you without cause is very grievous to me, ing upon the natural beauties of the scene, and I am not sure, all things considered, for the first time spreading out before his that I would not rather have had a confeseyes. How changed, alas! must have sion from you that you had been in a good been his feelings at a future time, when, handsome pet, followed up by a still handhomeward bound, after the lapse of a very somer repentance. few years, he reflected that the same blue waters had remorselessly closed over the head of the man he so dearly loved!

"The very greatest pleasure you can give me at this distance is to show yourself superior to the humors of others (as you do, indeed, at home in a noble manner), especially when you reflect that I would rather please you than all other women put together, your sister excepted, anxious as I am to do good and give pleasure where I can.

Among his letters from Italy are some charming ones addressed to his wife's sister, Elizabeth Kent, to whom he was greatly attached. She it was who, on one memorable occasion when a lovers' quarrel, assuming formidable dimensions, was threatening to separate him effectually "And now, Bebs mine, what shall I from his fiancée (then only fifteen or six- crowd into the rest of this letter to give teen years of age), had vigorously stepped you comfort after giving you pain? Fancy into the breach at a critical moment, re-all I would do to give it to you, and take stored the interrupted harmony, and man. it as well as you can. aged to place matters once more on a satisfactory footing. This service Leigh Hunt never forgot, his affection for "Bebs" being, as he reminds her in a letter I have somewhere seen, "greater than for any other human being next to my wife and family." She was also frequently the companion of his solitude in Surrey Jail, and when the delicate health of her children obliged Mrs. Hunt to remove them, during Hunt's imprisonment, to the seacoast, it was to Elizabeth she looked to supply her place in caring for the wellbeing and comfort of her husband during her enforced absence.

I transcribe a letter written from Italy to this favorite sister-in-law::

"Florence: 26 Feby., 1824.

"DEAREST BEBS, - When I tell you that I am preparing to send off eight articles for the Examiner on Tuesday, you will not wonder that I do not write you a longer letter. My next shall be a good crammed one. You will be glad to hear, however, that I have got through these articles much better than I expected, and am altogether, indeed, much better in health. If I g I go on as I do, I shall take a great stride in health, thanks to certain illustrious games at hop-scotch which I play every day with the boys at 12 o'clock in a great room here. At that time, till you hear to the contrary, you must fancy me jerking my great black locks up and down like a schoolgirl, on one leg, and winning eight games out of twelve.

"So, Bebs mine, you were not at all in an ill-humor with me, and never have been since I have been away. Well, I was going to say, like an Irishman, I am very

"Do you recollect a favorite spot of yours at Hampstead called the Ridge, with wood underneath it? There is one here as like it as it can stare. I have just been casting my eyes upon it, and fancying my. self with you. Fancy yourself dancing with joy upon it here, which you would surely do if you came; I mean- will do when you come. And now I mention this, pray let me know in your next what hopes and prospects you have of your own on that point. I never lose sight of them as far as I am concerned. Why cannot you meet with another offer to bring you over? I have more than hinted as much to the Novellos in case they come.

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Pray, when you write again, do not waste a good whole sheet of paper, and very properly and closely written too, on such long explanations about other people. Tell me, if you can, of every hair of your own head, and write as small and closely as you can, and cram your paper with everything that can give you pleasure, and nothing that can give you pain: for this is the way all existence should be crammed for you, if it could be, by your ever affectionate friend, L. H."

On Shelley's tragic end it would be superfluous to enlarge here. The final shock to Leigh Hunt was broken, in a manner, by the week of agonizing suspense which preceded the finding of the body, during which time he, in company with Lord Byron and Edward Trelawny, was straining every nerve in unremitting effort to discover the missing boat and the fate of its occupants. To Trelawny the tragedy was doubled in its intensity, owing to the affection he entertained for Mr. Williams,

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