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LEIGH HUNT, 1784-1859.

FEW authors of the first half of the nineteenth century more deserved the appellation of "a man of letters" than James Henry Leigh Hunt, and few exercised a greater influence upon the literature of his day. He was born in London, October 19, 1784, and educated at Christ Church Hospital, where he continued till his fifteenth year. He then entered the office of an attorney; next became a clerk in the War-Office, and finally decided to make literature his profession. In 1805 his brother John established a paper called The News, for which our author wrote the theatrical criticisms, which were well received. Three years afterwards he joined with his brother in setting up the weekly paper called The Examiner. The noble and independent spirit in which it was conducted, as well as the talent and scholarship it displayed, soon drew all eyes upon it, and it took a very high rank and exerted a very wide influence. For its own peace it spoke out too freely against the measures of the government; and three times were the proprietors prosecuted for a libel, but acquitted. The fourth time they were not so fortunate; for when the Morning Post, which then affected to be the organ of the Court, in its usual style of fulsome flattery, eulogized the Prince Regent (afterwards George IV.), whose character was notoriously infamous, and called him, among other things, an "Adonis," the Examiner thus rejoined, "translating the language of adulation into that of truth."

GEORGE THE FOURTH.

What person unacquainted with the true state of the case would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this "glory of the people" was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches? that this " protector of the arts" had named a wretched foreigner his historical painter, in disparagement or in ignorance of the merits of his own countrymen? that this "Mæcenas of the age" patronized not a single deserving writer? that this "breather of eloquence" could not say a few decent extempore words, if we are to judge, at least, from what he said to his regiment on its embarkation for Portugal? that this "conqueror of hearts" was the disappointer of hopes? that this "exciter of desire" [bravo! Messieurs of the Post], this "Adonis in loveliness," was a corpulent man of fifty? in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honorable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince was a violator of his word, a libertine, over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity?1

1 This truthful picture of the character of George IV. reminds us of the epigram on the four Georges, by Walter Savage Landor:

"George the First was always reckon'd Vile, but viler George the Second:

And what mortal ever heard
Any good of George the Third?

When from earth the Fourth descended,
Praise the Lord, the Georges ended!"

For this a prosecution was instituted against the two brothers, and the found a verdict of guilty. They were fined a thousand pounds,1 and imprisoned for two years in separate cells. Offers were made by the government not to press either penalty if a pledge would be given that no similar attacks should appear in their paper; but they were firmly and nobly rejected. They also declined to allow a generous stranger to pay the fine in their stead.

Though Leigh Hunt was ill when he entered prison, and though his illness and want of exercise permanently injured his constitution, he was not c his confinement. He continued to write and amuse himself in various ways. His independent spirit could not be broken by such miserable efforts of tyranny; and he proved quite conclusively that

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage."

The following is his account of some of the ways in which he amused himself in his confinement.

THE AUTHOR IN PRISON.2

I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling colored with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds; and when my bookcases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a piano-forte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. I took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise, on issuing from the borough and passing through the avenues of a jail, was dramatic. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy-tale. But I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to the neighboring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grassplot. The earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple-tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my flowers, they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from Derbyshire (Mr. Moore) told me he had seen no such heart's-ease. I bought the "Parnaso Italiano" while in prison, and used often to think of a passage in it while looking at this miniature piece of horticulture:

"Mio picciol orto,

A me sei vigna, e campo, e silva, e prato.”—BALDI.

"My little garden,

To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and wood, and meadow."

Here I wrote and read in fine weather, sometimes under an

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awning. In autumn, my trellises were hung with scarlet runners, which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes in my arm-chair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off. But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning. A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison. The latter was only for vegetables; but it contained a cherry-tree, which I twice saw in blossom.

On leaving prison he published his Story of Rimini, an Italian tale in verse, containing some exquisite lines and passages. He set up also a small weekly paper, called The Indicator, on the plan of the periodical essayists, which was well received. In 1822 he went to Italy to reside with Lord Byron, returned in 1826, and in 1828 published Lord Byron and his Contemporaries,—a record of his brief and not very pleasant companionship with his lordship in Italy. In the same year he started The Companion, a sequel to The Indicator. In 1834 he published a collected edition of his poetical works; and the same year appeared the London Journal, which he edited for two years. The rest of his life was passed in literary projects; in getting into debt, and getting out of it; in pleasant communing with his numerous literary friends, among whom were Barry Cornwall, Thomas Carlyle, the Brownings, and many others; in attempts to live cheerfully under affliction; and, chief of all, in accumulating book-lore. His closing years were rendered more happy by an opportune pension of two hundred pounds a year, which Lord John Russell obtained for him. He died on the 28th of August, 1859, and was buried, according to his wish, in Kensal Green Cemetery.1

Leigh Hunt's reputation rests upon his poems and essays,-chiefly the latter; though his Story of Rimini is an exceedingly beautiful and interesting tale, and his translations are among the best things of the kind we possess, "transporting the wine of Greece and Italy to England, making its color and flavor rather improved than otherwise by the voyage." As an essayist he is always heerful, philosophie, and instructive. His essays in the Indicator and Examiher will always be ranked as classic English prose,-not, perhaps, with the Spectator in respect of polish, wit, and courtly ease, but above it in delicate sensibility of fancy and imaginative adornments of life's commonplaces. His aim is to make life happier and more beautiful; and if an exuberant but genial vivacity of wit, a rich imagination, and a healthy interest in human joys, sorrows, and duties, can adorn and make truer our existence, then has Leigh Hunt's kindly purpose succeeded."

Read a pleasant short article in Chambers's Book of Days; also, North British Review, No. 68. Of his Autobiography the latter says, "It is lightful for many things: for its graceful *ketches of old times and manners; for its happy and life-like pictures of all sorts of interesting people; but most of all for the invincible gallantry of his long struggle with a bard fate."

Besides the works mentioned, his other productions are-1, Autobiography; with Remi

ences of Friends and Contemporaries, three dures; 2. The Seer; or, Commonplaces Refresher; 3, Wit and Humor, selected from the English Poets: 4, Stories from the Italian Poets, with lives of the writers; 5, Imagination and Fancy; or, Selections from the English Poets; ¦

6, A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla: 7, The Torn; 8. Captain Sword and Captain Pen,—a poetical denunciation of war: 9, The Descent of Liberty, a Mask; 10, Classic Tales; 11, Hero and Leander; 12, Feasts of the Poets; 13, The Town; 14, The Old Court Suburbs, two volumes. The two last are full of the rich talk of a most accomplished literary antiquary. Strolling through London, they invest the commonest places with beauty, partly by their genial piquancy of description, and partly by their exhaustless stores of anecdote. Obscure facts in history, equally with celebrated characters in literature, are vividly illustrated in these volumes, by reason of the half-personal rela tions which are made to attach us to them.

FUNERAL OF THE LOVERS OF “RIMINI.”

The days were then at close of autumn still,
A little rainy, and, towards nightfall, chill;
There was a fitful moaning air abroad;
And ever and anon, over the road,

The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees,
Whose trunks now throng'd to sight, in dark varieties.
The people, who from reverence kept at home,
Listen'd till afternoon to hear them come;
And hour on hour went by, and naught was heard
But some chance horseman, or the wind that stirr'd,
Till towards the vesper hour; and then 'twas said
Some heard a voice, which seem'd as if it read;
And others said that they could hear the sound
Of many horses trampling the moist ground.
Still, nothing came,-till on a sudden, just
As the wind open'd in a rising gust,

A voice of chanting rose, and, as it spread,
They plainly heard the anthem for the dead.
It was the choristers who went to meet

The train, and now were entering the first street.
Then turn'd aside that city, young and old,

And in their lifted hands the gushing sorrow roll'd.
But of the older people, few could bear

To keep the window, when the train drew near;
And all felt double tenderness to see
The bier approaching slow and steadily,
On which those two in senseless coldness lay,
Who but a few short months-it seem'd a day-
Had left their walls, lovely in form and mind,
In sunny manhood he-she first of womankind.
They say that when Duke Guido saw them come,
He clasp'd his hands, and, looking round the room.
Lost his old wits forever. From the morrow
None saw him after. But no more of sorrow.
On that same night those lovers silently
Were buried in one grave under a tree;
There, side by side, and hand in hand, they lay
In the green ground: and on fine nights in May
Young hearts betroth'd used to go there to pray.

DIRGE.

Bless'd is the turf, serenely bless'd,
Where throbbing hearts may sink to rest,
Where life's long journey turns to sleep,
Nor ever pilgrim wakes to weep.
A little sod, a few sad flowers,
A tear for long-departed hours,
Is all that feeling hearts request
To hush their weary thoughts to rest.
There shall no vain ambition come
To lure them from their quiet home;
Nor sorrow lift, with heart-strings riven,
The meek imploring eye to heaven;

Nor sad remembrance stoop to shed
His wrinkles on the slumberer's head;
And never, never love repair

To breathe his idle whispers there!

FLOWERS.

We are the sweet flowers,
Born of sunny showers,

(Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith;)
Utterance mute and bright,
Of some unknown delight,

We fill the air with pleasure by our simple breath;
All who see us love us,—
We befit all places;

Unto sorrow we give smiles, and unto graces, graces.
Mark our ways, how noiseless

All, and sweetly voiceless,

Though the March winds pipe, to make our passage clear,
Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green when our tips appear.
We thread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,—

And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh a-top, sweet flowers,

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,
And to the presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,

And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanish'd. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

SULTAN MAHMOUD,-AN EASTERN TALE.

There came a man, making his hasty moan,
Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne,

And crying out, "My sorrow is

my right,

And I will see the Sultan, and to-night."

'Sorrow," said Mahmoud, "is a reverend thing;
I recognize its right, as king with king;

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