Chapter XVI: Part 16

Here Mrs. West and Mrs. Hunt used to sit talking of old times and Philadelphia. West never made his appearance, except at dinner and tea-time, retiring again to his painting-room directly afterward; but used to contrive to mystify the embryo poet with some such question as, "Who was the father of Zebedee's children?" "The talk," he says, "was quiet; the neighborhood quiet; the servants quiet; I thought the very squirrel in the cage would have made a greater noise anywhere else. James the porter, a fine athletic fellow, who figured in his master's pictures as an apostle, was as quiet as he was strong. Even the butler, with his little twinkling eyes, full of pleasant conceit, vented his notions of himself in half-tones and whispers."

The house of the Thorntons was a different one, and a more socially attractive place. "There was quiet in the one; there were beautiful statues and pictures; and there was my Angelica for me, with her intent eyes at the fireside. But, beside quiet in the other, there was cordiality, and there was music, and a family brimful of hospitality and good-nature; and dear Almeria T., now Mrs. P----e, who in vain pretends that she is growing old. These were indeed holydays on which I used to go to Austin Friars. The house, according to my boyish recollections, was of the description I have been ever fondest of; large, rambling, old-fashioned, solidly built; resembling the mansions about Highgate and other old villages. It was furnished as became the house of a rich merchant and a sensible man, the comfort predominating over the costliness. At the back was a garden with a lawn; and a private door opened into another garden, belonging to the Company of Drapers; so that, what with the secluded nature of the street itself, and these verdant places behind it, it was truly _rus in urbe_, and a retreat. When I turned down the archway, I held my mother's hand tighter with pleasure, and was full of expectation, and joy, and respect. My first delight was in mounting the stair-case to the rooms of the young ladies, setting my eyes on the comely and sparkling face of my fair friend, with her romantic name, and turning over, for the hundredth time, the books in her library."

The whole description of this charming and cordial family, is one of those beautiful and sunny scenes in human life, to which the heart never wearies of turning. It makes the rememberer exclaim:--"Blessed house! May a blessing be upon your rooms, and your lawn, and your neighboring garden, and the quiet, old monastic name of your street; and may it never be a thoroughfare; and may all your inmates be happy! Would to God one could renew, at a moment's notice, the happy hours we have enjoyed in past times, with the same circles, in the same houses!"

But a wealthy aunt, with handsome daughters, came from the West Indies, and Great Ormond-street, and afterward Merton, in Surrey, where this aunt went to live, became a new and happy resort for him.

After Leigh Hunt quitted Christchurch, of which, and of the life there, he gives a very interesting description, at the age of sixteen was published a volume of his school-boy verses. He then spent some time in what he calls "that gloomiest of all '_darkness palpable_'"--a lawyer's office; he became theatrical critic in a newly established paper, the News; and his zeal, integrity, and talent formed a striking contrast to the dishonest criticism and insufferable dramatic nonsense then in public favor. In 1805, an amiable nobleman, high in office, procured him a humble post under government; but this was as little calculated for the public spirit of honest advocacy which lived in him as the lawyer's office. He soon threw it up, having engaged with his brother in the establishment of the well known newspaper, the Examiner. The integrity of principle which distinguished this paper, was as ill suited to the views of government at that dark and despotic period, as such integrity and boldness for constitutional reform were eminently needed by the public interests. He was soon visited with the attentions of the attorney-general; who, twice prosecuting him for libel, branded him "_a malicious and ill disposed person_." It is now matter of astonishment for what causes such epithets and prosecutions were bestowed by government at that day. On one occasion, in quoting an account of some birthday or levee, to the fulsome statement of the hireling court scribe, that the prince regent "looked like an Adonis," he added the words "of fifty"--making it stand "the prince looked like an Adonis of fifty!" This was cause enough for prosecution, and an imprisonment of two years in Horsemonger-lane jail. It was here, in 1813, that Lord Byron and Moore dined with him. They found him just as gay, happy, and poetical, as if his prison was a shepherd's cot in Arcadia, and there was no such thing as "an Adonis of fifty" in the world. The "wit in the dungeon," as Lord Byron styled him in some verses of the moment, had his trellised flower-garden without, and his books, busts, pictures, and piano-forte within. Byron has recorded his opinion at that time of Mr. Hunt, in his journal, thus:--"Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times: much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive aspect. If he goes on _qualis ab incepto_, I know few men who will deserve more praise, or obtain it. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't think him deeply versed in life: he is the bigot of virtue (not religion), and enamored of the beauty of that 'empty name,' as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every day proves it."

What a different portrait is this to that of the affected, finicking, artificial cockney, which the critics of that day would fain have made the world accept for Leigh Hunt. Lord Byron was a man of the world as well as a poet; he could see into character as well as any body when there were no good-natured souls at his elbow to alarm his aristocratic pride. He was right. Mr. Hunt has gone on _qualis ab incepto_; and deserved and done great things. The critic-wolves have long ceased to howl; the world knows and loves the man.

In process of time the Examiner was made over to other parties, and Mr. Hunt devoted his pen more exclusively to literary subjects. His connection with Byron and Shelley led him to Italy, where the Liberal, a journal, the joint product of the pens of those three celebrated writers, was started, but soon discontinued; and Leigh Hunt, before his return, saw the cordiality of Lord Byron toward him shaken, and witnessed one of the most singular and solemn spectacles of modern times--the burning of the body of his friend Shelley on the sea-shore, where he had been thrown up by the waves.

The occasion of Leigh Hunt's visit to Italy, and its results, have been placed before the public, in consequence of their singular nature, and of the high standing of the parties concerned, in a more prominent position than any other portion of his life. There has been much blame and recrimination thrown about on all sides. Mr. Hunt has stated his own case, in his work on Lord Byron and his Cotemporaries. The case of Lord Byron has been elaborately stated by Mr. Moore, in his Life and Letters of the noble poet. It is not the place here to discuss the question; but posterity will very easily settle it. My simple opinion is, that Mr. Hunt had much seriously to complain of, and, under the circumstances, has made his statement with great candor. The great misfortune for him, as for the world, was, that almost immediately on his arrival in Italy with his family, his true and zealous friend, Mr. Shelley, perished. From that moment, any indifferent spectator might have foreseen the end of the connection with Lord Byron. He had numerous aristocratic friends, who would, and who did spare no pains to alarm his pride at the union with men of the determined character of Hunt and Hazlitt for progress and free opinion. None worked more earnestly for this purpose, by his own confession, than Moore. From that hour there could be nothing for Mr. Hunt but disappointment and mortification. They came fast and fully. With all the splendid qualities of Lord Byron, whether of disposition or intellect, no man of sensibility would willingly have been placed in any degree of dependence upon him; no man of genius could be so without undergoing the deepest possible baptism of suffering. Through that Leigh Hunt went, and every generous mind must sympathize with him. Had Shelley lived, how different would have been the whole of that affair, and the whole of his future life. He died--and all we have to do is now simply to notice the residences of Leigh Hunt in Italy, without further reference to these matters.

The chief places of Mr. Hunt's Italian sojourn were Pisa, Genoa, and Florence. At Leghorn he and his family landed, and almost immediately went on with Shelley to Pisa, where Byron joined them; but at Monte Nero, near Leghorn, was at once introduced to a curious scene of mixed English and Italian life. "In a day or two, I went to see Lord Byron, who was in what the Italians call _villeggiatura_, at Monte Nero; that is to say, enjoying a country house for the season. I there met with a singular adventure, which seemed to make me free of Italy and stilettos, before I had well set foot in the country. The day was very hot; the road to Monte Nero was very hot, through dusty suburbs; and when I got there, I found the hottest-looking house I ever saw. Not content with having a red wash over it, the red was the most unseasonable of all reds, a salmon color. Think of this flaming over the country in a hot Italian sun.

"But the greatest of all the heats was within. Upon seeing Lord Byron, I hardly knew him, he was grown so fat; and he was longer in recognizing me, I was grown so thin. He was dressed in a loose nankeen jacket and white trowsers, his neckcloth open, and his hair in thin ringlets about his throat; altogether presenting a very different aspect from the compact, energetic, and curly-headed person whom I had known in England.

"He took me into an inner room, and introduced me to a young lady in a state of great agitation. Her face was flushed, her eyes lit up, and her hair, which she wore in that fashion, looked as if it streamed in disorder. This was the Countess Guiccioli. The Conte Pietro, her brother, came in presently, also in a state of agitation, and having his arm in a sling. I then learned, that a quarrel having taken place among the servants, the young count had interfered, and been stabbed. He was very angry; Madame Guiccioli was more so, and would not hear of the charitable comments of Lord Byron, who was for making light of the matter. Indeed, there was a look in the business a little formidable; for though the stab was not much, the inflictor of it threatened more, and was at that minute keeping watch under the portico, with the avowed intention of assaulting the first person that issued forth. I looked out of the window, and met his eye glaring upward like a tiger. The fellow had a red cap on like a _sans culotte_, and a most sinister aspect, dreary and meager, a proper caitiff. Thus, it appeared, the house was in a state of blockade; the nobility and gentry of the interior all kept in a state of impassibility by a rascally footman.

"How long things had continued in this state I can not say: but the hour was come when Lord Byron and his friends took their evening ride, and the thing was to be put an end to somehow. Fletcher, the valet, had been dispatched for the police, and was not returned.... At length we set out, Madame Guiccioli earnestly entreating 'Bairon' to keep back, and all of us uniting to keep in advance of Conte Pietro, who was exasperated. It was a curious moment for a stranger from England. I fancied myself pitched into one of the scenes in the Mysteries of Udolpho, with Montoni and his tumultuous companions. Every thing was new, foreign, and violent. There was the lady, flushed and disheveled, exclaiming against the '_scelerato_;' the young count, wounded and threatening; the assassin waiting for us with his knife; and last, not least in the novelty, my English friend metamorphosed, round-looking, and jacketed, trying to damp all this fire with his cool tones, and an air of voluptuous indolence. He had now, however, put on his loose riding-coat of mazarine blue, and his velvet cap, looking more lordly then, but hardly less foreign. It was an awkward moment for him, not knowing what might happen; but he put a good face on the matter; and as to myself, I was so occupied with the novelty of the scene, that I had not time to be frightened. Forth we issued at the door, all squeezing to have the honor of being the boldest, when a termination is put to the tragedy by the vagabond throwing himself on a bench, extending his arms, and bursting into tears. His cap was half over his eyes; his face gaunt, ugly, and unshaven; his appearance altogether more squalid and miserable than an Englishman could conceive it possible to find in such an establishment. This blessed figure reclined weeping and wailing, and asking pardon for his offense, and to crown all, he requested Lord Byron to kiss him."

This was a curious introduction to Italian life. Leghorn, Mr. Hunt says, is a polite Wapping, with a square and a theater. The country around, though delightful to a first view, from its vines hanging from the trees, and the sight of the Apennines, is uninteresting when you become acquainted with it. They left here and proceeded to Pisa. There they occupied the ground-floor of the Casa Lanfranchi, on the Lung' Arno. The house is said to have been built by Michael Angelo, and is worthy of him. It is, says Mr. Hunt, in a bold and broad style throughout, with those harmonious graces of proportion which are sure to be found in an Italian mansion. The outside is of rough marble.

Here poor Shelley saw his friends settled in their apartments, and took his leave forever! Here they spent their time in the manner which has been made so well known by the Life and Letters of Lord Byron,--talking or reading till afternoon in the house; then riding out to a wood or a vineyard, and firing pistols, after which they would occasionally alight at a peasant's cottage, and eat figs in the shade--returning to dinner. "In the evening," observes Mr. Hunt, "I seldom saw Byron. He recreated himself in the balcony, or with a book; and at night when I went to bed, he was just thinking of setting to work with Don Juan."

In the autumn, they left Pisa for Genoa; and in their way visited the deserted house of Shelley. Wild as the place is, it now seemed additionally so. It was melancholy, its rooms empty, and its garden neglected. "The sea fawned upon the shore, as though it could do no harm."

Genoa now became, as it would appear, the residence of Leigh Hunt for the greater part of the time that he continued in Italy, for he describes himself as quitting it for Florence, three years afterward. Mrs. Shelley had preceded them thither, and had furnished houses both for herself and Lord Byron, in the village of Albaro. With her they took up their residence in the Casa Negroto. There were forty rooms in it, some of them such as would be considered splendid in England, and all neat and new, with borders and arabesques. The balcony and stair-case were of marble; and there was a little flower-garden. The rent was twenty pounds a-year. Byron paid for his twenty-four pounds. It was called the Casa Saluzzi, was older and more imposing, with rooms in still greater plenty, and a good piece of ground. Mr. Hunt describes himself as passing a melancholy time at Albaro, walking about the stony alleys, and thinking of Shelley. Here the first number of that unfortunate publication, The Liberal, reached them; here they prepared the few numbers which succeeded it, and here the coldness between Byron and Hunt grew to its height, and they parted.

We next, and lastly, find Mr. Hunt at Florence. "I hailed it," he says, "as a good omen in Florence, that the two first words that caught my ears were flowers and woman--_fiori_ and _donne_. The night of our arrival, we put up at an hotel in a very public street, and were kept awake by songs and guitars. It was one of the pleasantest pieces of the south we had experienced; and for the moment, we lived in the Italy of books. One performer to a jovial accompaniment, sung a song about somebody's fair wife--_bianca moglie_--which set the street in roars of laughter. From the hotel, we went into a lodging in the street of beautiful women--Via delle Belle Donne--a name which is a sort of tune to pronounce. We there heard one night a concert in the street, and looking out, saw music-stands, books, etc., in regular order, and amateurs performing as in a room. Opposite our lodging was an inscription on a house, purporting that it was the Hospital of the Monks of Vallombrosa. Wherever you turned was music or a graceful memory. From the Via delle Belle Donne, we went to live in the Piazza Santa Croce, next to the church of that name, containing the ashes of Michael Angelo. On the other side of it was the monastery in which Pope Sixtus V. went stooping as if in decrepitude; 'looking,' as he said afterward, 'for the keys of St. Peter.' We lodged in the house of a Greek, who came from the island of Andros, and was called Dionysius; a name which has existed there, perhaps, ever since the god who bore it."

"The church of Santa Croce," says Mr. Hunt, "would disappoint you as much inside as out, if the presence of great men did not always cast a mingled shadow of the awful and beautiful over our thoughts." He then adds, "Agreeably to our old rustic propensities, we did not stop long in the city. We left Santa Croce to live at Maiano, a village on the slope of one of the Fiesolan hills, about two miles off. I passed there a very disconsolate time; yet the greatest comfort I experienced in Italy was from being in that neighborhood, and thinking, as I went about, of Boccaccio. Boccaccio's father had a house at Maiano, supposed to have been situate at the Fiesolan extremity of the hamlet. That divine writer, whose sensibility outweighed his levity a hundredfold--as a divine face is oftener serious than it is merry--was so fond of the place, that he not only laid the two scenes of the Decamerone on each side of it, with the valley his company resorted to in the middle, but has made the two little streams that embrace Maiano, the Affrico and the Mensola, the hero and heroine of his Nimphale Fiesolano. A lover and his vestal mistress are changed into them, after the fashion of Ovid. The scene of another of his works is on the banks of the Mugnone, a river a little distant; and the Decamerone is full of the neighboring villages. Out of the windows of one side of our house, we saw the turret of the Villa Gherardi, to which his 'joyous company' resorted in the first instance; a house belonging to the Machiavelli was nearer, a little on the left; and farther to the left, among the blue hills, was the white village of Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. The house is still remaining in the possession of the family. From our windows on the other side, we saw, close to us, the Fiesole of antiquity and of Milton, the site of the Boccaccio house before mentioned still closer, the valley of Ladies at our feet; and we looked toward the quarter of the Mugnone, and of a house of Dante, and in the distance beheld the mountains of Pistoia. Lastly, from the terrace in front, Florence lay clear and cathedraled before us, with the scene of Redi's Bacchus rising on the other side of it, and the villa of Arcetri, illustrious for Galileo.

"But I stuck to my Boccaccio haunts, as to an old home. I lived with the divine human being, with his friends of the Falcon and the Basil, and my own not unworthy melancholy; and went about the flowery hills and lanes, solitary, indeed, and sick to the heart, but not unsustained. * * * My almost daily walk was to Fiesole, through a path skirted with wild myrtle and cyclamen; and I stopped at the cloister of the Doccia, and sat on the pretty melancholy platform behind it, reading, or looking through the pines down to Florence. In the valley of Ladies, I found some English trees,--trees not vine and olive,--and even a bit of meadow; and these, while I made them furnish me with a bit of my old home in the north, did no injury to the memory of Boccaccio, who is of all countries, and finds his home wherever we do ourselves, in love, in the grave, in a desert island."

In the twenty-third article of the Wishing Cap, Mr. Hunt gives us this further description of Fiesole and the valley of Ladies:--

"Milton and Galileo give a glory to Fiesole beyond even its starry antiquity; nor perhaps is there a name eminent in the best annals of Florence, to which some connections can not be traced with this favored spot. When it was full of wood, it must have been eminently beautiful. It is at present, indeed, full of vines and olives, but this is not wood _woody_: not arboraceous, and properly sylvan. A few poplars and forest trees mark out the course of the Affrico; and the convent ground contrived to retain a good slice of evergreens, which make a handsome contrast on the hillside with its white cloister. But agriculture, quarries, and wood-fires have destroyed the rest. Nevertheless, I now found the whole valley beautiful. It is sprinkled with white cottages; the cornfields presented agreeable paths, leading among vines and fig-trees; and I discovered even a meadow; a positive English meadow, with the hay cut, and adorned with English trees. In a grassy lane, betwixt the corn, sat a fair rustic, receiving the homage of three young fellows of her acquaintance. In the time of Boccaccio, the Affrico formed a little crystal lake, in which (the said lake behaving itself, and being properly sequestered) the ladies of his company, one day, bathe themselves. The gentlemen, being informed of it, follow their example in the afternoon; and the next day the whole party dine, take their _siesta_ under the trees, and recount their novels. This lake has now disappeared before the husbandman, as if it were a fairy thing, of which a money-getting age was unworthy. Part of the Affrico is also closed up from the passenger by private grounds; but the rest of it runs as clearly as it did; and under the convent, a remnant of the woodier part of the valley, a delicious remnant, is still existing. The stream jumps into it, as if with delight, and goes slipping down little banks. It is embowered with olives and young chestnut-trees, and looks up to the long, white cloister, which is a conspicuous object over the country.

"A white convent, a woody valley, chestnut-trees intensely green, a sky intensely blue, a stream at which it is a pleasure to stop and drink,--behold a subject fit for a day in August.

"This then is the 'Valle delle Donne.' If Boccaccio's spirit ever visits his native country, here must it repose. It is a place for a knight in romance to take his rest in, his head on his elbow, and the sound of the water in his ear.

"I whisk to England in my Wishing Cap, and fetch the reader to enjoy the place with me.

"How do you like it? Is it not a glen most glen-icular? a confronting of two leafy banks, with a rivulet between? Shouldn't you like to live in the house over the way, where the doves are? If you walk a little way to the left, through the chestnut-trees, you see Florence. The convent up above us on the right is the one I spoke of. There is nobody in it now, but a peasant for housekeeper. Look at this lad coming down the path with his olive complexion and black eyes. He is bringing goats. I see them emerging from the trees; huge creatures, that when they rise on their hind legs to nibble the boughs, almost look formidable. There is Theocritus for you. And here is Theocritus or Longus, which you will; for a peasant-girl is with him, one of the pleasantest countenances in the world, with a forehead and eyes fit for a poetess; as they all have. I wish the fellow were as neat as his companion, but somehow these goatherds look of a piece with their goats. They love a ragged picturesque."

From this charming and celebrated spot of earth, Leigh Hunt turned northward and homeward through Switzerland and France. Every lover of true poetry and of an excellent and high-hearted man, must regret that his visit to Italy was dashed by such melancholy circumstances, for no man was ever made more thoroughly to enjoy that fine climate and classical land. Yet as the friend of Shelley, Keats, Charles Lamb, and others of the first spirits of the age, Mr. Hunt must be allowed, in this respect, to have been one of the happiest of men. It were no mean boon of providence to have been permitted to live in the intimacy of men like these; but, beside this, he had the honor to suffer, with those beautiful and immortal spirits, calumny and persecution. They have achieved justice through death--he has lived injustice down. As a politician, there is a great debt of gratitude due to him from the people, for he was their firm champion when reformers certainly did not walk about in silken slippers. He fell on evil days, and he was one of the first and foremost to mend them. In literature he has distinguished himself in various walks; and in all he has manifested the same genial, buoyant, hopeful, and happy spirit. 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. His Indicator and his London Journal abound with papers which make us in love at once with the writer and ourselves. There is a charm cast over everyday life, that makes us congratulate ourselves that we live. All that is beautiful and graceful in nature, and love-inspiring in our fellow-men, is brought out and made part of our daily walk and pleasure. His Months, a calendar of nature, bears testimony to his intense love of nature, which breathes equally in every page of his poetry. In these prose works, however, as well as in some of his earlier poetry, we find certain artificialities of phrase, fanciful expressions, and what are often termed conceits, which the critics treated as cockneyisms, and led them to style him the head of the Cockney school. There are certainly many indications, particularly in The Months, of his regarding the country rather as a visitor than an inhabitant. His _Standpunct_, as the Germans call it, his point of standing, or in our phraseology, his point of view from which he contemplates nature, is the town. He thus produces to a countryman a curious inversion of illustration. For instance, he compares April to a lady watering her flowers at a balcony; and we almost expect him, in praising real flowers, to say that they are nearly equal to artificial ones. But these are but the specks on a sun-disk, all glowing with the most genuine love of nature. In no writer does the love of the beautiful and the good more abound. And, after all, the fanciful epithets in which he endeavors to clothe as fanciful notions, are, as he himself has explained, nothing whatever belonging to London, or the land of Cockayne, but to his having imbued his mind long and deeply with the poetry, and, as a matter of course, with the poetic language of our older writers. In a wider acquaintance with nature, the world, and literature, these have vanished from his style; and I know of no more manly, English, and chastely vigorous style than that of his poems in general. In conformity with the strictures of various critics, he has, moreover, rewritten his fine poem Rimini. It was objected that the story was not very moral, and he has now, in the smaller edition published by Moxon, altered the story so as to palliate this objection as much as possible, and, as he says, to bring it, in fact, nearer to the truth of the case. For my part, I know not what moral the critics would have, if wretchedness and death, as the consequences of sin, be not a solemn moral. If the selfish old father, who deceives his daughter into a marriage by presenting to her the proxy as the proposed spouse, is punished by finding his daughter and this proxy prince, who went out from him with pomp and joy, soon come back to him in a herse, and with all his ambitious projects thus dashed to the ground, is not held as a solemn warning, where shall such be found? However, the poet has shown his earnest desire to set himself right with the public, and the public has now the poem in its two shapes, and can accommodate its delicate self at its pleasure. I regret that the space allowed for this notice does not permit me to point out a number of those delightful passages which abound in his beautiful and graceful poems. The graphic as well as dramatic power of Rimini, the landscape and scene-painting of that poem, are only exceeded by the force with which the progress of passion and evil is delineated. The scene in the gardens and the pavilion, where the lovers are reading Lancelot du Lac, is not surpassed by any thing of the kind in the language. The sculptured scenes on the walls of this pavilion are all pictures living in every line:--

"The sacrifice
By girls and shepherds brought, with reverend eyes,
Of sylvan drinks and foods, simple and sweet,
And goats with struggling horns and planted feet."

The opening of the poem, beginning--

"The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May
Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay,"--

all life, elasticity, and sunshine;--and the melancholy ending--

"The days were then at close of autumn--still,
A little rainy, and toward nightfall chill:
There was a fitful moaning all abroad;
And ever and anon over the road,
The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees," etc.,

are passages of exquisite beauty, marking the change from joy to sorrow in one of the loveliest poems in the language. We have in it the genuine spirit of Chaucer, the rich nervous cadences of Dryden, with all the grace and life of modern English. But it is in vain here to attempt to speak of the poetic merits of Leigh Hunt. A host of fine compositions comes crowding on our consciousness. The Legend of Florence, a noble tragedy; The Palfrey; Hero and Leander; The Feast of the Poets; and The Violets; numbers of delightful translations from the Italian, a literature in which Leigh Hunt has always reveled; and above all, Captain Sword and Captain Pen. We would recommend every body, just now that the war-spirit is rising among us, to read that poem, and learn what horrors they are rejoicing over, and what the Christian spirit of this age demands of us. But we must praise the lyrics of the volume:--the pathos of the verses "To T. L. H., six years old, during a sickness," and the playful humor of those "To J. H., four years old," call on us for notice; and then the fine blank verse poems, Our Cottage, and Reflections of a Dead Body, are equally importunate. If any one does not yet know what Leigh Hunt has done for the people and the age, let him get the pocket edition of his poems, and he will soon find himself growing in love with life, with his fellow-men, and with himself. The philosophy of Leigh Hunt is loving, cheerful, and confiding in the goodness that governs us all. And when we look back to what was the state of things when he began to write, and then look round and see what it is now, we must admit that he has a good foundation for so genial a faith.

It remains only to take a glance or two at his English homes. To several of these we can trace him. Soon after his quitting Horsemonger-lane prison, he was living at Paddington, having a study looking over the fields toward Westbourne-green. In this he had a narrow escape one morning of being burned, owing his escape to some "fair cousin" not named. There he was visited by Lord Byron and Wordsworth. At one time he was living at 8, York-buildings, New-road, Marylebone. In the London Journal of January 7, 1835, Mr. Hunt gives a very charming account of a very happy Twelfth Night spent there, and in commemoration of it planted some young plane-trees within the rails by the garden gate. Under these trees, but a year or two ago, he had the pleasure of seeing people sheltering from the rain; but they are now cut down. Here he first had the pleasure of seeing John Keats, and here he was visited by Foscolo. At other times he lived in Lisson-grove; at Hampstead, in the Vale of Health, where, as already observed, Keats wrote Sleep and Poetry; at Highgate, near Coleridge; and at Woodcote-green, near Ashstead-park, in Surrey, where he laid the scene, and, I believe, wrote the romance, of Sir Ralph Esher.

Since his return to England he has lived chiefly in the suburbs of London, in what Milton called "garden houses;" for some years in Chelsea, near Thomas Carlyle; and now in Edwardes-square, Kensington, a square of small, neat houses, built by a Frenchman, it is said in expectation of the conquest of England by Bonaparte, and with a desire to be ready settled, and with homes for his countrymen of more limited means against that event. The speculation failing with the mightier speculation of Napoleon, the poor Frenchman was ruined.

Such is a hasty sketch of the many wanderings and sojourns of Leigh Hunt. May his age be rewarded for the services of his youth. In closing this article I would, also with this wish, express another, and that is, that he would sometime publish that small, but most beautiful manual of domestic devotion, called by him Christianism, and printed only for private circulation, some years ago. The object of this little work seems to be, to give to such as had not full faith in Christianity an idea of what is excellent in it, and by which they might be benefited and comforted, even though they could not attain full belief in its authenticity. The spirit and style of it are equally beautiful.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

One of the greatest pleasures that an author can have, is to record the delight which he has derived from other authors; after a long career of intellectual enjoyment, to pay the due tribute of gratitude to those writers of an antecedent period who have laid the foundations of his taste, and stimulated him in that career which has made his happiness. This is always an act of love, an act of reverence and regard, which is full of its own peculiar pleasure. But how much is this pleasure augmented, when this tribute can be paid to the living; to one who preceded us, and yet is still among us; to the teacher of the past, to the patriarch of the present! Of the writers, and especially the poets, who charmed our young and inexperienced spirits, how few are those whose works will bear the test of time; how few to whom we can turn, at a mature age, and find them all that we ever believed them to be! Mr. Rogers is one of this rare class. Among the very earliest literary pleasures which I can remember, was that of reading--and that time after time--his Pleasures of Memory: and the reading of this poem is now, after nearly half-a-century, not only one of my pleasures of memory, but, on reperusal, is equally fresh, equally true to nature, and equally attractive, by the soundness and the beauty of its sentiments. Mr. Rogers stands among us, if not the very oldest living literary man, yet by far the oldest of our poets; and it is a welcome testimony to the good sense and feeling of the age, that he stands among us with all the affectionate respect and the honor which he has so well won. Mr. Rogers, I believe, has never met with that species of Mohawk criticism, that scalping and scarifying literary assault and battery, which so many of his cotemporaries have had to undergo. There was a gentleness and a calm suavity about his writings which disarmed the most eager assailant of merit. There was in him an absence of that militant and antagonistic spirit which provokes the like animus. There was felt only the purity of taste, the deep love of beauty in art and nature, the vivid yet tender sympathy with humanity, which put every one dreadfully in the wrong who should attempt to strike down their possessor. The very first line of criticism applied to the writings of Mr. Rogers, was in the Monthly Review, on his Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems, published by Cadell, in 1786, and was this--"In these pieces we perceive the hand of a master."

The master thus discovered in the first essay of his power, has never ceased since to be acknowledged. In 1792, or six years afterward, he published the Pleasures of Memory, which was received with universal and delighted acclamation. It took hold, at once, of the English heart; and became, and remains, and is likely to remain, one of the classic beauties of our national poetry. From that day, to so late a period as 1830, Mr. Rogers, at leisurely but tolerably regular intervals, has gone on adding to the riches of our hoards of taste and genius. In 1798, or in another six years, he published his Epistle, with other Poems; in 1812, or fourteen years afterward, The Voyage of Columbus; two years after that, Jacqueline, _i.e._, in 1814; five years later, or in 1819, Human Life; and, finally, in 1830, or when he was sixty-seven years of age, his Italy.

These works have steadily extended his fame; and amid the truest enjoyment of that fame, Mr. Rogers has lived a long and honored, and, singularly for a poet, fortunate life. His wealth and position in society, not less than his wealth and position in the world of mind, have drawn around him all the distinguished characters of his time; and his house, filled from top to bottom with evidences of his taste, and of his means of indulging it, has been the resort of most of those who have given its intellectual stamp to the age. Amid the great struggles and events of that period, the wars, the revolutions, and the social contests which have communicated their fiery elements to the spirit of genius, and produced works of a like extreme character, the mind of Rogers, calm and self-balanced, has pursued its course, apparently uninfluenced by all that moved around him. With human nature, and human life in general, he sympathized; but the love of the true and beautiful in it has prevailed over the contagion of the vast and violent: he has dealt rather with the pure and touching incidents of existence, than with the passionate and the tragic. Many, on this account, have been disposed to attribute to him a want of power and greatness, forgetting that the predominating character of his taste has inevitably decided the character of his subjects, and that to these subjects he has given all the power and beauty which they were capable of. Mr. Rogers is a great master in his own department. In him taste lives as strongly as genius. He is a poetic artist. The beautiful and the refined mingle themselves with the structure as inseparably as with the material of his compositions. He knows that there is greatness in the broad champagne, with its woods and towns, as well as in the huge and splendid mountain; in the lofty but pure and placid sky, as well as in the stormy ocean. It is not the creator only of the Laocoon in all his agonies, that is a great artist--the Apollo Belvedere, and the Venus de Medicis, and the Mourning Psyche, calm in most perfect repose, or depressed with grief, equally demonstrate the hand of a master. There is often the most consummate display of genius in the stillest statue. Poussin or Claude are not the less admirable because they do not affect the robust horrors of Rubens, or the wildness of Salvator. In Rogers, the true, the pathetic, all those feelings, and sentiments, and associations, that are dear to us as life itself, are evolved with a skill that is unrivaled; and the language is elaborated to a perfection that resembles the finish of a beautiful picture, or the music to inimitable words. If we need the excitement of impetuous emotions, we would turn to Byron; if the influence of calm, and soothing, and harmonizing ones, we would sit down to Rogers. Each is eminent in his own department, each will exercise the supremacy of his genius upon us.

In the Pleasures of Memory we are forcibly reminded of Goldsmith and the Deserted Village. We feel how deeply the genius of that exquisite writer had affected the mind of Rogers in his youth. There is a striking similarity of style, of imagery, and of subject. It is not a deserted village, but a deserted mansion, which is described, and where we are led to sympathize with all that is picturesque in nature, and dear to the heart in domestic life.

"Mark yon old mansion peering through the trees,
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze.
That casement, arched with ivy's brownest shade,
First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed.
The moldering gateway shows the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport;
When nature pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.

See, through the fractured pediment revealed,
Where moss inlays the rudely sculptured shield,
The martin's old hereditary nest--
Long may the ruin spare its hallowed guest!

As jars the hinge, what sullen echoes call!
Oh haste, unfold the hospitable hall!
That hall, where once in antiquated state,
The chair of justice held the grave debate.

Now stained with dews, with cobwebs darkly hung,
Oft has its roof with peals of rapture rung;
When round yon ample board in due degree,
We sweetened every meal with social glee.
The heart's light laugh pursued the exciting jest;
And all was sunshine in each little breast.
'Twas here we traced the slipper by the sound.
And turned the blindfold hero round and round.
'Twas here, at eve, we formed our fairy ring;
And Fancy fluttered on her wildest wing.
Giants and genii chained each wondering ear;
And orphan sorrows drew the ready tear.
Oft with the babes we wandered in the wood,
Or viewed the forest feats of Robin Hood.
Oft, fancy-led, at midnight's fearful hour,
With startling step we scaled the lonely tower,
O'er infant innocence to hang and weep,
Murdered by ruffian hands, when smiling in its sleep.

Ye household deities! whose guardian eye
Marked each pure thought we registered on high;
Still, still ye walk the consecrated ground,
And breathe the soul of inspiration round.

As o'er the dusky furniture I bend,
Each chair awakes the feelings of a friend.
The storied arras, source of fond delight,
With old achievement charms the wildered sight;
And still with heraldry's red hues impressed,
On the dim window glows the pictured crest;
The screen unfolds its many colored chart;
The clock still points its moral to the heart--
That faithful monitor 'twas heaven to hear,
When soft it spoke a promised pleasure near;
And has its sober hand, its simple chime,
Forgot to trace the feathered feet of Time?
That massive beam with curious carvings wrought,
Whence the caged linnet soothed my pensive thought;
Those muskets cased with venerable rust.
Those once-loved forms still breathing through their dust,
Still from the frame in mold gigantic cast,
Starting to life--all whisper of the past!"

This is so exquisite and old-English that it will continue to charm as long as there are hearts and memories. The whole of the first part of the poem is of the like tone and feature; the old garden, the old school and its porch, the Gipsy group, the old beggar, the village church and church-yard--

"On whose gray stone, that fronts the chancel door,
Worn smooth by tiny feet now seen no more,
Each eve we shot the marble through the ring,
When the heart danced, and life was in the spring."

As it advances, however, it takes a wider range, and gradually embraces higher topics and more extensive regions. History, and death, and eternity, all swell into its theme.

A new element of style also marks the progress of this poem. There are more animated invocations, and a greater pomp of versification. It looks as if the muse of Darwin had infused its more ambitious tone, without leading the poet away from his purely legitimate subjects. By whatever passing influences, or what processes of thought, this change was produced, there it is. This poem, and this peculiar style of versification, soon caught the ear and fascinated the mind of Campbell, when a very young man, and out of the Pleasures of Memory sprung the Pleasures of Hope. The direct imitation of both style, manner, subject, and cast of subject, by Campbell, is one of the most striking things in the language; the peculiarities of the style and phraseology only, as was natural by an enthusiastic youth, much exaggerated. In Campbell, that which in Rogers is somewhat sounding and high-toned, becomes, with all its beauty, turgid, and often bordering on bombast. The very epithets are the same. "The wild bee's wing"--"the war-worn courser," and "pensive twilight in her dusky car," continually in the Pleasures of Hope remind you of the Pleasures of Memory.

"Hark, the bee winds her small but mellow horn,
Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn.
O'er thymy downs she bends her busy course,
And many a stream allures her to its source.
'Tis noon, 'tis night. That eye so finely wrought,
Beyond the reach of sense, the soar of thought,
Nor vainly asks the scenes she left behind:
Its orb so full, its vision so confined!
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell?
Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell?
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clew
Of summer scents, that charmed her as she flew?
Hail, Memory, hail! thy universal reign
Guards the least link of being's glorious chain."--_Rogers._

In the disciple the manner is reproduced, and yet modified as in these lines:--

"Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour.
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms th' Æolian organ play,
And sweep the furrowed lines of conscious thought away."

How the master and the scholar may be again recognized in the following passages:--

"So, when the mild TUPIA dared explore
Arts yet untaught, and worlds unknown before;
And with the sons of science wooed the gale,
That rising, swelled their strange expanse of sail;
So when he breathed his firm, yet fond adieu,
Borne from his leafy hut, his carved canoe,
And all his soul best loved, such tears he shed
While each soft scene of summer beauty fled.
Long o'er the wave a wistful look he cast,
Long watched the streaming signal from the mast;
Till twilight's dewy tints deceived his eye,
And fairy forests fringed the evening sky."--_Rogers_.

"And such thy strength-inspiring aid, that bore
The hardy Byron to his native shore,--
In horrid climes where Chiloe's tempests sweep
Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep,
'Twas his to mourn misfortune's rudest shock,
Scourged by the winds, and cradled on the rock,
To wake each joyless morn and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men;
Whose race, unyielding as their native storm,
Know not a trace of nature but the form;
Yet at thy call the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued;
Pierced the deep woods, and hailing from afar
The moon's pale planet, and the northern star;
Paused at each dreary cry unheard before,
Hyenas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;
Till led by thee o'er many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, or shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend!"--_Campbell_.

Into every form of expression the scholar follows his master:--

"When Diocletian's self-corrected mind
The imperial fasces of a world resigned,
Say, why we trace the labors of his spade
In calm Salona's philosophic shade?
Say, when contentious Charles renounced a throne,
To muse with monks unlettered and unknown,
What from his soul the parting tribute drew,
What claimed the sorrows of a last adieu?"--_Rogers_.

"And say, when summoned from the world and thee,
I lay my head beneath the willow-tree,
Wilt thou, sweet mourner! at my stone appear,
And soothe my parting spirit lingering near?"--_Campbell_.

But the likeness is found everywhere--in phrase, in imagery, in topics, and in tone. When, after a lapse of twenty-seven years, Mr. Rogers produced his poem of Human Life, what a change of manner, what a transformation of style had taken place in him! No longer the grandiloquent invocations were found; no longer the sounding style, no longer the easy recurrence of the cadence, pausing on the cæsura and falling at the close of the line. Here the whole rhythm and construction were of a new school and a new generation. The style was more simple and more vigorous. The sentences marched on with a rare recurrence of the cæsura, the cadence did not fall with the end of the line, but oftener far in the middle of it, and the verse abounded with triplets.

"He reads thanksgiving in the eyes of all--
All met as at a holy festival!
--On the day destined for his funeral!
Lo! there the friend, who, entering where he lay,
Breathed in his drowsy ear--'Away, away!
Take thou my cloak--Nay, start not, but obey!
Take it, and leave me.'"

What a total revolution is here! The old chime is gone, the old melody is exchanged for a new. All depends on entirely new principles, and seeks to give pleasure through an utterly fresh medium. But the poem itself is one of the most beautiful things in any language. It is human life from the cradle to the tomb, with all its pleasures, aspirations, trials, and triumphs. Every thing which clings round the spirit of man as precious, every thing which wins us onward, and sustains us in sorrow, and soothes us under the infliction of wrong--the glory of public good, and the hallowed charm of domestic affection, is thrown into this poem, with the art of a master and the great soul of a sanctified experience. Never either were the varied scenes of English life more sweetly described. The wedding and the burial, the village wake and the field sports, the battle and the victory, all are blended inimitably into the great picture of existence, and at times the aged minstrel rises into a strain of power and animation, such as rebuke the doubters of those attributes in him.

"Then is the age of admiration--Then
Gods walk the earth, or beings more than men;
Who breathe the soul of inspiration round,
Whose very shadows consecrate the ground!
Ah! then comes thronging many a wild desire,
And high imagining, and thought of fire!
Then from within, a voice exclaims--'Aspire!'
Phantoms, that upward point, before him pass,
As in the cave athwart the wizard's glass;
They, that on youth a grace, a luster shed,
Of every age, the living and the dead!"