JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT was born on the nineteenth of October, 1784, at Southgate in Middlesex. His father, a clergyman of the established church, was an American refugee, and his mother a sister of BENJAMIN WEST, President of the Royal Academy. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, where LAMB and COLERIDGE were his school-fellows; and was subsequently for some time in the office of an attorney; but he abandoned the study of the law to accept a place under government, which he held until the establishment of the Examiner, by himself and his brother, in 1809. The Examiner was violent in its politics, and was for many years conducted with great ability and success. HUNT was several times prosecuted by the government, and was imprisoned two years in the Surrey jail for a libel on the Prince Regent. He covered the walls of his cell with garlands, however, and wrote as industriously as ever. It was while a prisoner that he composed The Feast of the Poets, The Descent of Liberty, and The Story of Rimini. It was in this period, also, that he became acquainted with Lord BYRON. He has been censured, and I think justly, for his conduct towards the noble poet, respecting whose faults gratitude might have made him silent, for BYRON had been a liberal friend when his friendship was serviceable to him.

In 1816 HUNT established The Reflector, a quarterly magazine; afterward, in conjunction with SHELLEY and BYRON, The Liberal, and, with HAZLITT, The Round Table. He also published in weekly numbers The Indicator and The Companion, two of the most delight ful series of essays in the English language. In the preface to the last edition of these papers he tells us that they were written during times of great trouble with him, and helped him to see much of that fair play between his own anxieties and his natural cheerfulness, of which an indestructible belief in the good and the beautiful has rendered him perhaps not undeserving." In 1840 he published a selection of his contributions to various periodicals under the title of The Seer, or Common-Places Refreshed, "to show that the more we look at any thing in this beautiful

and abundant world with a desire to be pleased with it, the more we shall be rewarded by the loving Spirit of the universe with discoveries which await only the desire." His other principal prose writings are Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, and Recollections of Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries.

The best of HUNT's poems is The Story of Rimini. In the edition of his Poetical Works published by Moxon in 1844, it is much altered: the morality is improved, and the catastrophe is conformed to history. Besides this and the other poems to which I have alluded, he has written Hero and Leander, The Palfrey, Captain Sword and Captain Pen, Blue Stocking Revels or the Feast of Violets, The Legend of Florence, Miscellaneous Poems, and a volume of Translations.

One of HUNT's most apparent characteristics is his cheerfulness. His temperament is obviously mercurial. His fondness for the gayer class of Italian writers indicates a sympathy with southern buoyancy not often encountered in English poetry. His versification is easy and playful; too much so, indeed, for imposing effect. He seems to have written generally under the inspiration of high animal spirits. His sentiment is lively and tender, rather than serious and impressive. The reviewers have censured him with rather too much severity for occasional affectations. With a few exceptions on this score his Story of Rimini is a charming poem. The Legend of Florence, written at a later period, is one of the most original and captivating of modern plays. Many of his Epistles glow with a genial humour and spirit of fellowship which betray fine social qualities. He lives obviously in his affections, and cultivates literature with refined taste rather than with lukewarm assiduity.

HUNT's intimacy with SHELLEY and KEATS is well known to every one acquainted with the lives of those great poets. He is still, as in earlier days, a general favourite in society, and has more and warmer personal friends than almost any other literary man in England.

TO LORD BYRON.

ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR ITALY AND GREECE.

SINCE you resolve, dear Byron, once again To taste the far-eyed freedom of the main, And as the coolness lessens in the breeze, Strike for warm shores that bathe in classic seas,— May all that hastens, pleases, and secures, Fair winds and skies, and a swift ship, be yours, Whose sidelong deck affords, as it cuts on, An airy slope to lounge and read upon; And may the sun, cool'd only by white clouds Make constant shadows of the sails and shrouds; And may there be sweet, watching moons at night, Or shows, upon the sea, of curious light; And morning wake with happy-blushing mouth, As though her husband still had "eyes of youth;" While fancy, just as you discern from far The coasts of Virgil and of Sannazzar, May see the nymphs emerging, here and there, To tie up at the light their rolling hair.

I see you now, half-eagerness, half-ease, Ride o'er the dancing freshness of the seas; I see you now (with fancy's eyesight too) Find, with a start, that lovely vision true, While on a sudden, o'er the horizon's line Phoebus looks forth with his long glance divine, At which old ocean's white and shapely daughters Crowd in the golden ferment of the waters, And halcyons brood, and there's a glistering show Of harps midst bosoms and long arms of snow; And from the breathing sea, in the God's eye, A gush of voices breaks up to the sky To hail the laurell'd bard, that goes careering by.

And who, thus gifted, but must hear and see
Wonders like these, approaching Italy?—
Enchantress Italy,-who born again
In Gothic fires, woke to a sphery strain,
And rose and smiled, far lovelier than before,
Copier of Greece and Amazon no more,
But altogether a diviner thing,

Fit for the Queen of Europe's second spring,
With fancies of her own, and finer powers
Not to enslave these mere outsides of ours,
But bend the godlike mind, and crown it with her
flowers.

Thus did she reign, bright-eyed, with that sweet

tone

Long in her ears; and right before her throne
Have sat the intellectual Graces three,
Music, and painting, and wing'd poetry,

Of whom were born those great ones, thoughtfulfaced,

That led the hierarchy of modern taste ;-
Heavenly composers, that with bow symphonious
Drew out, at last, music's whole soul harmonious;
Poets, that knew how Nature should be woo'd,
With frank address, and terms heart-understood;
And painters, worthy to be friends of theirs,
Hands that could catch the very finest airs
Of natural minds, and all that soul express
Of ready concord, which was made to bless,
And forms the secret of true amorousness.

Not that our English clime, how sharp soe'er,
Yields in ripe genius to the warmest sphere;
For what we want in sunshine out of doors,
And the long leisure of abundant shores,
By freedom, nay by sufferance, is supplied,
And each man's sacred sunshine, his fire-side.
But all the four great masters of our song,
Stars that shine out amidst a starry throng,
Have turn'd to Italy for added light,
As earth is kiss'd by the sweet moon at night;-
Milton for half his style, Chaucer for tales,
Spenser for flowers to fill his isles and vales,
And Shakspeare's self for frames already done
To build his everlasting piles upon.
Her genius is more soft, harmonious, fine;
Our's bolder, deeper, and more masculine :
In short, as woman's sweetness to man's force,
Less grand, but softening by the intercourse,
So the two countries are,-so may they be,-
England the high-soul'd man, the charmer Italy.

But I must finish, and shall chatter less
On Greece, for reasons which yourself may guess.
Only remember what you promised me
About the flask from dark-well'd Castally,—
A draught, which but to think of, as I sit,
Makes the room round me almost turn with wit.
Gods! What may not come true, what dream
divine,

If thus we are to drink the Delphic wine!
Remember too elsewhere a certain town,
Whose fame, you know, Cæsar will not hand down.

And pray, my Lord, in Italy take care,
You that are poet, and have pains to bear,
Of lovely girls, that step across the sight,
Like Houris in a heaven of warmth and light,
With rosy-cushion'd mouths, in dimples set,
And ripe dark tresses and glib eyes of jet.
The very language, from a woman's tongue,
Is worth the finest of all others sung.

And so adieu, dear Byron,-dear to me
For many a cause, disinterestedly ;—
First, for unconscious sympathy, when boys,
In friendship, and the Muse's trying joys;—
Next for that frank surprise, when Moore and you
Came to my cage, like warblers kind and true,
And told me, with your arts of cordial lying,
How well I look'd, when you both thought me

dying;

Next for a rank worn simply, and the scorn
Of those who trifle with an age free-born ;-
For early storms, on fortune's basking shore,
That cut precocious ripeness to the core ;-
For faults unbidden, other's virtue's own'd;
Nay, unless Cant's to be at once enthroned,
For virtues too, with whatsoever blended,
And e'en were none possess'd, for none pretended ;-
Lastly, for older friends, fine hearts, held fast
Through every dash of chance, from first to last ;-
For taking spirit as it means to be,-
For a stretch'd hand, ever the same to me,-
And total, glorious want of vile hypocrisy.

Adieu, adieu:-I say no more.-God speed you! Remember what we all expect, who read you.

JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT was born on the nineteenth of October, 1784, at Southgate in Middlesex. His father, a clergyman of the established church, was an American refugee, and his mother a sister of BENJAMIN WEST, President of the Royal Academy. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, where LAMB and COLERIDGE were his school-fellows; and was subsequently for some time in the office of an attorney; but he abandoned the study of the law to accept a place under government, which he held until the establishment of the Examiner, by himself and his brother, in 1809. The Examiner was violent in its politics, and was for many years conducted with great ability and success. HUNT was several times prosecuted by the government, and was imprisoned two years in the Surrey jail for a libel on the Prince Regent. He covered the walls of his cell with garlands, however, and wrote as industriously as ever. It was while a prisoner that he composed The Feast of the Poets, The Descent of Liberty, and The Story of Rimini. It was in this period, also, that he became acquainted with Lord BYRON. He has been censured, and I think justly, for his conduct towards the noble poet, respecting whose faults gratitude might have made him silent, for BYRON had been a liberal friend when his friendship was serviceable to him.

In 1816 HUNT established The Reflector, a quarterly magazine; afterward, in conjunction with SHELLEY and BYRON, The Liberal, and, with HAZLITT, The Round Table. He also published in weekly numbers The Indicator and The Companion, two of the most delight ful series of essays in the English language. In the preface to the last edition of these papers he tells us that they were written during times of great trouble with him, and helped him to see much of that fair play between his own anxieties and his natural cheerfulness, of which an indestructible belief in the good and the beautiful has rendered him perhaps not undeserving." In 1840 he published a selection of his contributions to various periodicals under the title of The Seer, or Common-Places Refreshed, "to show that the more we look at any thing in this beautiful

and abundant world with a desire to be pleased with it, the more we shall be rewarded by the loving Spirit of the universe with discoveries which await only the desire." His other principal prose writings are Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, and Recollections of Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries.

The best of HUNT's poems is The Story of Rimini. In the edition of his Poetical Works published by Moxon in 1844, it is much altered: the morality is improved, and the catastrophe is conformed to history. Besides this and the other poems to which I have alluded, he has written Hero and Leander, The Palfrey, Captain Sword and Captain Pen, Blue Stocking Revels or the Feast of Violets, The Legend of Florence, Miscellaneous Poems, and a volume of Translations.

One of HUNT's most apparent characteristics is his cheerfulness. His temperament is obviously mercurial. His fondness for the gayer class of Italian writers indicates a sympathy with southern buoyancy not often encountered in English poetry. His versification is easy and playful; too much so, indeed, for imposing effect. He seems to have written generally under the inspiration of high animal spirits. His sentiment is lively and tender, rather than serious and impressive. The reviewers have censured him with rather too much severity for occasional affectations. With a few exceptions on this score his Story of Rimini is a charming poem. The Legend of Florence, written at a later period, is one of the most original and captivating of modern plays. Many of his Epistles glow with a genial humour and spirit of fellowship which betray fine social qualities. He lives obviously in his affections, and cultivates literature with refined taste rather than with lukewarm assiduity.

HUNT'S intimacy with SHELLEY and KEATS is well known to every one acquainted with the lives of those great poets. He is still, as in earlier days, a general favourite in society, and has more and warmer personal friends than almost any other literary man in England.

TO LORD BYRON.

ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR ITALY AND GREECE.

SINCE you resolve, dear Byron, once again To taste the far-eyed freedom of the main, And as the coolness lessens in the breeze, Strike for warm shores that bathe in classic seas,May all that hastens, pleases, and secures, Fair winds and skies, and a swift ship, be yours, Whose sidelong deck affords, as it cuts on, An airy slope to lounge and read upon; And may the sun, cool'd only by white clouds Make constant shadows of the sails and shrouds; And may there be sweet, watching moons at night, Or shows, upon the sea, of curious light; And morning wake with happy-blushing mouth, As though her husband still had "eyes of youth;" While fancy, just as you discern from far The coasts of Virgil and of Sannazzar, May see the nymphs emerging, here and there, To tie up at the light their rolling hair.

I see you now, half-eagerness, half-ease, Ride o'er the dancing freshness of the seas; I see you now (with fancy's eyesight too) Find, with a start, that lovely vision true, While on a sudden, o'er the horizon's line Phoebus looks forth with his long glance divine, At which old ocean's white and shapely daughters Crowd in the golden ferment of the waters, And halcyons brood, and there's a glistering show Of harps midst bosoms and long arms of snow; And from the breathing sea, in the God's eye, A gush of voices breaks up to the sky To hail the laurell'd bard, that goes careering by.

And who, thus gifted, but must hear and see
Wonders like these, approaching Italy?—
Enchantress Italy,-who born again
In Gothic fires, woke to a sphery strain,
And rose and smiled, far lovelier than before,
Copier of Greece and Amazon no more,
But altogether a diviner thing,

Fit for the Queen of Europe's second spring,
With fancies of her own, and finer powers
Not to enslave these mere outsides of ours,
But bend the godlike mind, and crown it with her
flowers.

Thus did she reign, bright-eyed, with that sweet

tone

Long in her ears; and right before her throne
Have sat the intellectual Graces three,
Music, and painting, and wing'd poetry,
Of whom were born those great ones, thoughtful-
faced,

That led the hierarchy of modern taste ;-
Heavenly composers, that with bow symphonious
Drew out, at last, music's whole soul harmonious;

Poets, that knew how Nature should be woo'd,
With frank address, and terms heart-understood;
And painters, worthy to be friends of theirs,
Hands that could catch the very finest airs
Of natural minds, and all that soul express
Of ready concord, which was made to bless,
And forms the secret of true amorousness.

Not that our English clime, how sharp soe'er,
Yields in ripe genius to the warmest sphere;
For what we want in sunshine out of doors,
And the long leisure of abundant shores,
By freedom, nay by sufferance, is supplied,
And each man's sacred sunshine, his fire-side.
But all the four great masters of our song,
Stars that shine out amidst a starry throng,
Have turn'd to Italy for added light,

As earth is kiss'd by the sweet moon at night;-
Milton for half his style, Chaucer for tales,
Spenser for flowers to fill his isles and vales,
And Shakspeare's self for frames already done
To build his everlasting piles upon.
Her genius is more soft, harmonious, fine;
Our's bolder, deeper, and more masculine :
In short, as woman's sweetness to man's force,
Less grand, but softening by the intercourse,
So the two countries are,-so may they be,-
England the high-soul'd man, the charmer Italy.

But I must finish, and shall chatter less
On Greece, for reasons which yourself may guess.
Only remember what you promised me
About the flask from dark-well'd Castally,-
A draught, which but to think of, as I sit,
Makes the room round me almost turn with wit.
Gods! What may not come true, what dream

divine,

If thus we are to drink the Delphic wine!
Remember too elsewhere a certain town,
Whose fame, you know, Cæsar will not hand down.

And pray, my Lord, in Italy take care,
You that are poet, and have pains to bear,
Of lovely girls, that step across the sight,
Like Houris in a heaven of warmth and light,
With rosy-cushion'd mouths, in dimples set,
And ripe dark tresses and glib eyes of jet.
The very language, from a woman's tongue,
Is worth the finest of all others sung.

And so adieu, dear Byron,-dear to me
For many a cause, disinterestedly ;—
First, for unconscious sympathy, when boys,
In friendship, and the Muse's trying joys;—
Next for that frank surprise, when Moore and you
Came to my cage, like warblers kind and true,
And told me, with your arts of cordial lying,
How well I look'd, when you both thought me
dying;-

Next for a rank worn simply, and the scorn
Of those who trifle with an age free-born ;-
For early storms, on fortune's basking shore,
That cut precocious ripeness to the core ;-
For faults unbidden, other's virtue's own'd;
Nay, unless Cant's to be at once enthroned,
For virtues too, with whatsoever blended,
Lastly, for older friends, fine hearts, held fast
And e'en were none possess'd, for none pretended;-
Through every dash of chance, from first to last ;-
For taking spirit as it means to be,-
For a stretch'd hand, ever the same to me,-
And total, glorious want of vile hypocrisy.

Adieu, adieu:-I say no more.-God speed you! Remember what we all expect, who read you.

THE FATAL PASSION.*

Now why must I disturb a dream of bliss, And bring cold sorrow 'twixt the wedded kiss? How mar the face of beauty, and disclose The weeping days that with the morning rose, And bring the bitter disappointment in,— The holy cheat, the virtue-binding sin,— The shock, that told this lovely, trusting heart, That she had given, beyond all power to part, Her hope, belief, love, passion, to one brother, Possession, (oh, the misery!) to another!

Some likeness was there 'twixt the two,-an air At times, a cheek, a colour of the hair, A tone, when speaking of indifferent things; Nor, by the scale of common measurings, Would you say more perhaps, than that the one Was more robust, the other finelier spun; That of the two, Giovanni was the graver, Paulo the livelier, and the more in favour.

Some tastes there were indeed, that would prefer
Giovanni's countenance as the martialler;
And 'twas a soldier's truly, if an eye
Ardent and cool at once, drawn-back and high,
An eagle's nose and a determined lip
Were the best marks of manly soldiership.
Paulo's was fashion'd in a different mould,

And surely the more fine: for though 't was bold,
When boldness was required, and could put on
A glowing frown as if an angel shone,
Yet there was nothing in it one might call
A stamp exclusive or professional,—

No courtier's face, and yet its smile was ready,-
No scholar's, yet its look was deep and steady,—
No soldier's, for its power was all of mind,
Too true for violence, and too refined.
The very nose, lightly yet firmly wrought,
Show'd taste; the forehead a clear-spirited thought;
Wisdom look'd sweet and inward from his eye;
And round his mouth was sensibility

It was a face, in short, seem'd made to show
How far the genuine flesh and blood could go ;—
A morning glass of unaffected nature,-
Something, that baffled looks of loftier feature,—
The visage of a glorious human creature.

If any points there were, at which they came
Nearer together, 't was in knightly fame,
And all accomplishments that art may know,-
Hunting, and princely hawking, and the bow,
The rush together in the bright-eyed list,
Fore-thoughted chess, the riddle rarely miss'd,
And the decision of still knottier points,
With knife in hand, of boar and peacock joints-
Things, that might shake the fame that Tristan got,
And bring a doubt on perfect Launcelot.†
But leave we knighthood to the former part;
The tale I tell is of the human heart.

The worst of Prince Giovanni, as his bride Too quickly found, was an ill-temper'd pride.

The Third Canto of Rimini.

The two famous knights of the Round Table, great huntsmen, and of course great carvers. Boars and peacocks, served up whole, the latter with the feathers on, were eminent dishes with the knights of old, and must have called forth all the exercise of this accomplishment.

Bold, handsome, able (if he chose) to please,
Punctual and right in common offices,
He lost the sight of conduct's only worth,
The scattering smiles on this uneasy earth,
And on the strength of virtues of small weight,
Claim'd tow'rds himself the exercise of great.
He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours
He'd hold a sullen countenance for hours,
And then, if pleased to cheer himself a space,
Look for the immediate rapture in your face,
And wonder that a cloud could still be there,
How small soever, when his own was fair.
Yet such is conscience, so design'd to keep
Stern, central watch, though all things else go
sleep,

And so much knowledge of one's self there lies
Cored, after all, in our complacencies,
That no suspicion would have touch'd him more,
Than that of wanting on the generous score;
He would have whelm'd you with a weight of scorn,
Been proud at eve, inflexible at morn,
In short, ill-temper'd for a week to come,
And all to strike that desperate error dumb.
Taste had he, in a word, for high-turn'd merit,
But not the patience, nor the genial spirit.
And so he made, 'twixt virtue and defect,
A sort of fierce demand on your respect,
Which, if assisted by his high degree,
It gave him in some eyes a dignity,
And struck a meaner deference in the many,
Left him at last unloveable with any.

From this complexion in the reigning brother His younger birth perhaps had saved the other. Born to a homage less gratuitous,

He learn'd to win a nobler for his house;
And both from habit and a genial heart,
Without much trouble of the reasoning art,
Found this the wisdom and the sovereign good,—
To be, and make, as happy as he could.
Not that he saw, or thought he saw, beyond
His general age, and could not be as fond
Of wars and creeds as any of his race,—
But most he loved a happy human face;
And wheresoe'er his fine, frank eyes were thrown,
He struck the looks he wish'd for, with his own.
So what but service leap'd where'er he went!
Was there a tilt-day or a tournament,—
For welcome grace there rode not such another,
Not yet for strength, except his lordly brother.
Was there a court-day, or a feast, or dance,
Or minstrelsy with roving plumes from France,
Or summer party to the greenwood shade,
With lutes prepared, and cloth on herbage laid,
And ladies' laughter coming through the air,—
He was the readiest and the blithest there;
And made the time so exquisitely pass
With stories told with elbow on the grass,
Or touch'd the music in his turn so finely,
That all he did, they thought, was done divinely.
The lovely stranger could not fail to see
Too soon this difference, more especially
As her consent, too lightly now, she thought,
With hopes far different had been strangely bought;
And many a time the pain of that neglect
Would strike in blushes o'er her self-respect: