54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



caulay alludes with rare commendation to his " catholic taste." Of all 

 authors indeed, and probably of all readers, Leigh Hunt had the keen- 

 est eye for merit and the warmest appreciation of it wherever found. 

 He was actively engaged in politics, yet was never blind to the genius 

 of an adversary ; blameless himself in morals, he could admire the 

 wit of Wycherley ; and, a freethinker in religion, he could see both 

 wisdom and beauty in the divines. Moreover, it is immensely to his 

 credit, that this universal knowledge, instead of puffing him up, only 

 moved him to impart it, and that next to the pleasure he took in books 

 was that he derived from teaching others to take pleasure in them. 

 Witness his " Wit and Humor " and his " Imagination and Fancy," to 

 my mind the greatest treasures in the way of handbooks that have 

 ever been offered to students of English literature, and the completest 

 antidotes to pretense in it. How many a time, as a boy, have I pon- 

 dered over this or that passage in the originals, from Shakespeare to 

 Suckling, and then compared it with the italicized lines in his two vol- 

 umes, to see whether I had hit upon the beauties ; and how often, alas ! 

 I hit upon the blots ! * 



It is curious that Leigh Hunt, whose style has been so severely 

 handled (and, it must be owned, not without some justice) for its affec- 

 tations, should have been so genuine (although always generous) in his 

 criticisms. It was nothing to him whether an author was old or new ; 

 nor did he shrink from any literary comparison between two writers 

 when he thought it appropriate (and he was generally right), notwith- 

 standing all the age and authority that might be at the back of one 

 of them. Thackeray, by the way, a very different writer and thinker, 

 had this same outspoken honesty in the expression of his literary taste. 

 In speaking of the hero of Cooper's five good novels Leather-Stock- 

 ing, Hawkeye, etc. he remarks with quite a noble simplicity, "I 

 think he is better than any of Scott's lot." 



It is a " far cry " from the " Faerie Queen " to " Childe Harold," 

 which, reckoning by years, is still a modern poem ; yet I wonder how 

 many persons under thirty even of those who term it " magnificent " 

 have ever read " Childe Harold " ? At one time it was only people 

 under thirty who had read it ; for poetry to the ordinary reader is the 

 poetry that was popular in his youth "no other is genuine." 



"A dreary, weary poem called the 'Excursion,' 

 "Written in a manner which is my aversion," 



* I remember (when " I was but a little tiny boy ") I thought that " the fringed cur- 

 tains of thine eye advance," addressed by Prospero to Miranda, must needs be a very fine 

 line ; imagine, then, my confusion, on referring for corroboration to my " guide, philoso- 

 pher, and friend," as he truly was, to find this passage : " Why Shakespeare should have 

 condescended to the elaborate nothingness, not to say nonsense, of this metaphor (for 

 what is meant by ' advancing curtains ' ?) I can not conceive. That is to say, if he did con- 

 descend ; for it looks very like the interpolation of some pompous declamatory player. 

 Pope has put it into his ' Treatise on the Bathos.' " 



