and there can be no doubt, in spite of Dickens's denials, that he is the original of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. He himself confessed that he never knew the multiplication table. On leaving prison he published his Story of Rimini (1816), the tale of Paolo and Francesca in verse, afterwards altered, but without improvement. He set up a little weekly paper, The Indicator (1819-21), on the plan of the periodical essayists, which was well received. He also gave to the world two small volumes of poetry, The Feast of the Poets (1814) and Foliage (1818). In 1822 he went to Italy with his wife and seven children to reside with Lord Byron, and to establish The Liberal, a quarterly review containing a crude and violent melange of poetry and politics, both in the extreme of liberalism. This connection proved a failure. Shelley, on whose advice he had gone out, was drowned soon after his arrival, and Hunt was one of those present at his cremation. The Liberal did not sell it ran through only four numbers (1822-23); Byron's titled and aristocratic friends cried out against so plebeian a partnership; and Hunt found that 'my noble friend,' to whom he was indebted in a pecuniary sense, was cold, sarcastic, and worldly-minded. Unluckily Hunt, after his return to England in 1825, published Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (1828), in which his disappointment found vent, and this was construed into ingratitude. His life for the next twenty years was spent in precarious journalism, the profits of which did. not always avail to keep the bailiffs out of the house. Several weekly periodicals which he edited-The Companion (1828), the Chat of the Week (1830), The Tatler (1830-32), and Leigh Hunt's London Journal (1834-35)-had but an evanescent success. The last of these, perhaps the most characteristic and popular of them all, obtained at the time the generous praise of Dr Robert Chambers, who addressed to Hunt a congratulatory letter extolling his 'kind nature,' and describing him as 'the friend of all mankind.' In 1835 Hunt produced and dedicated to Lord Brougham his anti-war poem of Captain Sword and Captain Pen, which was followed in 1840 by a drama entitled A Legend of Florence, and in 1842 by a narrative poem, The Palfrey. Through Macaulay's influence he became a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, whose editor, however, the ponderous Macvey Napier, objected to the chattiness of his style, and offended him by asking for something 'gentleman-like' from his pen. The chief of Hunt's many later works were Sir Ralph Esher, a novel (1832); Biographical and Critical Notices of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar (1840), which gave the occasion of Macaulay's well-known essay; the interesting Autobiography (1850); and The Old Court Suburb (1855), a delightful sketch of Kensington, where he lived from 1840 to 1850. For ten years before his death on 28th August 1859 the pecuniary distresses so disagreeably described by Carlyle had been at least alleviated by pensions from the Shelley family and the Civil List. Leigh Hunt's great and unrealised ambition was to be a poet. His most elaborate effort in verse, the Story of Rimini, shows him utterly inadequate to the treatment of a noble and passionate theme, and justifies to some extent the attacks of the Blackwood critics and other Tory reviewers, who so mercilessly ridiculed the faults in taste committed by the 'Cockney poet.' Hunt has no dignity and often very little delicacy as a poet; but his verses as a rule show good spirits, good humour, and a lively if rather too luxurious fancy. It is as an essayist and critic, however, that he is read and gratefully remembered. The papers in the Indicator and Companion show, of course, nothing to be compared with the rare and poignant genius of Lamb or the keen and brusque virility of Hazlitt, but their familiar bonhomie and mild enthusiasm give them an individuality and a humbler charm of their own. As a critic, again, while neither luminous nor penetrative, Hunt has the merit of genuine and zestful appreciativeness and of a saving catholicity of taste. Despite the frequent triviality of his egotistic prattle, his honest love of literature becomes contagious, and of few critics can it be said that their books have done so much as the Indicator and Companion, the volumes on Imagination and Fancy and Wit and Humour, and the Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla to spread a love and an understanding of good poetry. May Morning at Ravenna. Round old Ravenna's clear-shewn towers and bay, Of expectation and a bustling crowd. Callings, and clapping doors, and curs unite, (From Rimini.) To T. L. H., six years old, during a Sickness. Sleep breathes at last from out thee, My little patient boy; And balmy rest about thee I sit me down, and think Of all thy winning ways; Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, Thy sidelong pillowed meekness, The little trembling hand These, these are the things that may demand Sorrows I've had, severe ones, I will not think of now; But when thy fingers press My light, where'er I go, My bird when prison-bound, My hand-in-hand companion-no, My prayers shall hold thee round. To say 'He has departed '— 'His voice '-' his face is gone'—' is gone;' To feel impatient-hearted, Yet feel we must bear on; Ah! I could not endure To whisper of such woe, Unless I felt this sleep ensure That it will not be so. Yes, still he 's fixed, and sleeping! Who say, 'We've finished here.' To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that 's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel. Abou Ben Adhem-may his tribe increase !— Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head, Answered: The names of those who love the Lord.'. And showed the names whom love of God had blest, My Books. Sitting, last winter, among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me-to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet-I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books: how I loved them, too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and my Arabian Nights; then above them at my Italian poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on a writingdesk; and thought how natural it was in C. L. to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer. At the same time I wondered how he could sit in that front-room of his with nothing but a few unfeeling tables and chairs, or at best a few engravings in trim frames, instead of putting a couple of arm-chairs into the back-room with the books in it, where there is but one window. Would I were there, with both the chairs properly filled, and one or two more besides ! 'We had talk, sir,'—the only talk capable of making one forget the books. I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to lean my head against them. Living in a southern climate, though in a part sufficiently northern to feel the winter, I was obliged, during that season, to take some of the books out of the study, and hang them up near the fireplace in the sitting-room, which is the only room that has such a convenience. I therefore walled myself in, as well as I could, in the manner above-mentioned. I took a walk every day, to the astonishment of the Genoese, who used to huddle against a bit of sunny wall, like flies on a chimneypiece; but I did this only that I might so much the more enjoy my English evening. The fire was a wood fire instead of a coal; but I imagined myself in the country. I remembered at the very worst, that one end of my native land was not nearer the other than England is to Italy. While writing this article I am in my study again. Like the rooms in all houses in this country which are not hovels, it is handsome and ornamented. On one side it looks towards a garden and the mountains; on another, to the mountains and the sea. What signifies all this? I turn my back upon the sea; I shut up even one of the side-windows looking upon the mountains, and retain no prospect but that of the trees. On the right and left of me are book-shelves; a bookcase is affectionately open in front of me; and thus kindly enclosed with my books and the green leaves, I write. If all this is too luxurious and effeminate, of all luxuries it is the one that leaves you the most strength. And this is to be said for scholarship in general. It unfits a man for activity, for his bodily part in the world; but it often doubles both the power and the sense of his mental duties; and with much indignation against his body, and more against those who tyrannise over the intellectual claims of mankind, the man of letters, like the magician of old, is prepared to play the devil' with the great men of this world, in a style that astonishes both the sword and the toga. I do not like this fine large study. I like elegance. I like room to breathe in, and even walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself, give me a small snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it, looking upon trees. Some prefer a place with few, or no books at all-nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus; but I should say that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did not recollect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round tower, walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one's books while writing-at least they say SO. For my part, I think I have them in a sort of sidelong mind's eye; like a second thought, which is none-like a waterfall, or a whispering wind. I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense apartment, with books all in Museum order, especially wire - safed. I say nothing against the Museum itself, or public libraries. They are capital places to go to, but not to sit in; and talking of this, I hate to read in public, and in strange com but I think I should feel still more distrait in France, in spite of the benevolence of the servitors, and the generous profusion of pen, ink, and paper. I should feel as if I were doing nothing but interchanging amenities with polite writers. (From The Indicator.) Leigh Hunt's life is best read in his own Autobiography (new ed. by his son, 1860; annotated ed. by Ingpen, 1902) and in the monographs by Mr Cosmo Monkhouse in the Great Writers' series (1893) and by Mr Brimley Johnson (1896). His bibliography is exhaustively treated in the elaborate List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, compiled by Alexander Ireland in 1868; while selections from his Correspondence were published by his son, Thornton Hunt, in 1862. His poetical works were collected by Moxon in 1883, and a selection appears in the series of Canterbury Poets.' Many of his prose writings, including the Autobiography, were reprinted in a convenient series of seven volumes by Messrs Smith Elder & Co. But there are many selec tions from the prose works, more or less comprehensive. Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), satirist, was born at Weymouth, the only child of a London glass-merchant, who died three years afterwards. His boyhood was passed at Chertsey, and for six and a half years he went to a private school on Englefield Green; but from thirteen he was selfeducated, growing up an accomplished scholar. The chief events of his uneventful life were the loss of his first love (1808); his under-secretaryship to Sir Home Popham, then commanding the fleet before Flushing (1808–9); his close friendship with Shelley, whom he first met in Wales in 1812, during one of his many walking tours; his employment from 1819 to 1856 in the office of the East India Company as clerk, correspondent, and chief examiner ; his retiring with a pension of £1333; his marriage in 1820 to the 'Beauty of Carnarvonshire,' who bore him one son and three daughters, and died in 1852 after twenty-six years of ill-health; and the important part he bore in the introduction of iron steamships to Eastern waters (1832-40). In 1823 he had taken a cottage for his mother at Halliford on the Thames, and here he himself died, aged eighty. His literary activity extended over more than half a century. Of his half-dozen booklets of verse, published between 1804 and 1837, the best, Rhododaphne, offers nothing so good as some of the gay lyrics scattered throughout his seven novels' -Headlong Hall (1816), Melincourt (1817), Nightmare Abbey (1818; its hero is Shelley), Maid Marian (1822), The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829), Crotchet Castle (1831), and Gryll Grange (1860). And these 'novels' are interesting chiefly as a study of character-the author's own; in Thomas Love Peacock, a Rabelaisian pagan of the eighteenth century, egotistic, protean, we have the Alpha and Omega of his writings. These mirror his likings -for nature, music, the classics, madeira, and good living generally; and his stronger, if exaggerated, dislikes for field sports, tobacco, reviews, political economy, all things Scotch and American, and above all for Lord Brougham. They leave on one the impression that the little he did not know was to his mind not worth knowing; that because he had not been at a university and was not religious, therefore Oxbridge and heaven were outside of his universe and irrelevant to it. They may still find admirers in the cultured few, but the steely wit and erudition of their dialogues can never touch the great heart of the people. They are-trite though it sounds-'caviare to the general.' The War-song of Dinas Vawr. We therefore deemed it meeter We made an expedition; We met an host and quelled it; On Dyfed's richest valley, Where herds of kine were browsing, We made a mighty sally, To furnish our carousing. Fierce warriors rushed to meet us; We met them, and o'erthrew them : They struggled hard to beat us; But we conquered them, and slew them. As we drove our prize at leisure, The king marched forth to catch us; His rage surpassed all measure, But his people could not match us. He fled to his hall-pillars; And, ere our force we led off, We there, in strife bewildering, The spearmen and the bowmen. We brought away from battle, And much their land bemoaned them, And the head of him who owned them : Ednyfed, King of Dyfed, His head was borne before us; His wine and beasts supplied our feasts, (From The Misfortunes of Elphin.) Landscape-gardening. Mr Milestone. This, you perceive, is the natural state of one part of the grounds. Here is a wood, never yet touched by the finger of taste; thick, intricate, and gloomy. Here is a little stream, dashing from stone to stone, and overshadowed with these untrimmed boughs. Miss Tenorina. The sweet romantic spot! How beautifully the birds must sing there on a summer evening! Miss Graziosa. Dear sister! how can you endure the horrid thicket? Mr Milestone. You are right, Miss Graziosa: your taste is correct-perfectly en règle. Now, here is the same place corrected-trimmed-polished -decorated adorned. Here sweeps a plantation, in that beautiful regular curve: there winds a gravel walk: here are parts of the old wood, left in these majestic circular clumps, disposed at equal distances with wonderful symmetry: there are some single shrubs scattered in elegant profusion: here a Portugal laurel, there a juniper; here a laurustinus, there a spruce fir; here a larch, there a lilac; here a rhododendron, there an arbutus. The stream, you see, is become a canal: the banks are perfectly smooth and green, sloping to the water's edge: and there is Lord Littlebrain, rowing in an elegant boat. Squire Headlong. Magical, faith! Mr Milestone. Here is another part of the grounds in its natural state. Here is a large rock, with the mountain-ash rooted in its fissures, overgrown, as you see, Hideous. Mr Milestone. Beautiful, Miss Tenorina. Base, common, and popular. Such a thing as you may see anywhere, in wild and mountainous districts. Now, observe the metamorphosis. Here is the same rock, cut into the shape of a giant. In one hand he holds a horn, through which that little fountain is thrown to a prodigious elevation. In the other is a ponderous stone, so exactly balanced as to be apparently ready to fall on the head of any person who may happen to be beneath : and there is Lord Littlebrain walking under it. Squire Headlong. Miraculous, by Mahomet! Mr Milestone. This is the summit of a hill, covered, as you perceive, with wood, and with those mossy stones scattered at random under the trees. Miss Tenorina. What a delightful spot to read in on a summer's day! The air must be so pure, and the wind must sound so divinely in the tops of those old pines ! Mr Milestone. Bad taste, Miss Tenorina. Bad taste, I assure you. Here is the spot improved. The trees are cut down the stones are cleared away: this is an octagonal pavilion, exactly on the centre of the summit: and there you see Lord Littlebrain, on the top of the pavilion, enjoying the prospect with a telescope. Squire Headlong. Glorious, egad! Mr Milestone. Here is a rugged mountainous road, leading through impervious shades: the ass and the four goats characterise a wild uncultured scene. Here, as you perceive, it is totally changed into a beautiful gravelroad, gracefully curving through a belt of limes; and there is Lord Littlebrain driving four-in-hand. Squire Headlong. Egregious, by Jupiter! Mr Milestone. Here is Littlebrain Castle, a Gothic, moss-grown structure, half bosomed in trees. Near the casement of that turret is an owl peeping from the ivy. Squire Headlong. And devilish wise he looks. Mr Milestone. Here is the new house, without a tree near it, standing in the midst of an undulating lawn: a white, polished, angular building, reflected to a nicety in this waveless lake; and there you see Lord Littlebrain looking out of the window. Squire Headlong. And devilish wise he looks too. You shall cut me a giant before you go. Mr Milestone, Good. I'll order down my little corps of pioneers. (From Headlong Hall.) Freebooter Life in the Forest. The baron, with some of his retainers, and all the foresters, halted at daybreak in Sherwood Forest. The foresters quickly erected tents, and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale. 'Now, Lord Fitzwater,' said the chief forester, ' recognise your son-in-law that was to have been in the outlaw Robin Hood.' Ay, ay,' said the baron, 'I have recognised you long ago. 'And recognise your young friend Gamwell,' said the second, in the outlaw Scarlet.' 'And Little John, the page,' said the third, in Little John the outlaw.' 'And Father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,' said the friar, in Friar Tuck of Sherwood Forest. Truly I have a chapel here hard by in the shape of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John holds the plate at the door, for good pray. ing deserves good paying.' 'I am in fine company,' said the baron. 'In the very best of company,' said the friar; 'in the high court of Nature, and in the midst of her own nobility. Is it not so? This goodly grove is our palace; the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy; the sun, and the moon, and the stars are its everlasting lamps; the grass, and the daisy, and the primrose, and the violet are its many-coloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; the Mayflower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry; the lark, and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale are its unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army, to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which he has indeed; but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power. He holds his dominion over the forest, and its horned multitude of citizen-deer, and its swinish multitude or peasantry of wild boars, by right of conquest and force of arms. He levies contributions among them by the free consent of his archers, their virtual represen tatives. If they should find a voice to complain that we are "tyrants and usurpers, to kill and cook them up in their assigned and native dwelling-place," we should most convincingly admonish them, with point of arrow, that they have nothing to do with our laws but to obey them. Is it not written that the fat ribs of the herd shall be fed upon by the mighty in the land? And have not they, withal, my blessing?-my orthodox, canonical, and archiepiscopal blessing? Do I not give thanks when they are well roasted and smoking under my nose? What title had William of Normandy to England that Robin of Locksley has not to merry Sherwood? William fought for his claim. So does Robin. With whom both? With any that would or will dispute it. William raised contributions. So does Robin. From whom both? From all that they could or can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do any pay them to Robin? For the same reason to both --because they could not or cannot help it. They differ, indeed, in this, that William took from the poor and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor; and therein is Robin illegitimate, though in all else he is true prince. Scarlet and John, are they not peers of the forest?-lords temporal of Sherwood? And am not I lord spiritual? Am I not archbishop? Am I not Pope? Do I not consecrate their banner and absolve their sins? Are not they State, and am not I Church? Are not they State monarchical, and am not I Church militant? Do I not excommunicate our enemies from venison and brawn, and, by'r Lady! when need calls, beat them down under my feet? The State levies tax, and the Church levies tithe. so do we. Mass-we take all at once. What then? It is tax by redemption, and tithe by commutation. Your William and Richard can cut and come again, but our Robin deals with slippery subjects that come not twice to his exchequer. What need we, then, to constitute a court, except a fool and a laureate? For the fool, his only use is to make false knaves merry by art, and we are true men, and are merry by nature. For the laureate, his only office is to find virtues in those who have none, and to drink sack for his pains. We have quite virtue enough to need him not, and can drink our sack for ourselves.' Even 'Well preached, friar,' said Robin Hood; 'yet there is one thing wanting to constitute a court, and that is a queen.—And now, lovely Matilda, look round upon these silvan shades, where we so often have roused the stag from its ferny covert. The rising sun smiles upon us through the stems of that beechen knoll. Shall I take your hand, Matilda, in the presence of this my court? Shall I crown you with our wildwood corona and hail you Queen of the Forest? Will you be the Queen Matilda of your own true King Robin?' Matilda smiled assent. 'Not Matilda,' said the friar: 'the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is Great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with wine, and baptise thee MARIAN. (From Maid Marian.) |