The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-25 00:00:00

MR. LEIGH HUNT.

We just have seen a proposal to publish by
subscription, in one handsome octavo volume,
price a guinea, the poetical works of Mr. Leigh
Hunt, to which we need not say we give our
hearty approbation. Mr. Hunt is a man of
talent—of great undoubted talent, remarkable
for sprightly fancy, quick, social feeling, and, in
his poetic character, for a disposition always to
look on the sunny, in preference to the shaded,
side of things, and help out the great cause of
humanity, with all the zeal and ability of which
he is master. We have little doubt therefore
that a selection from his numerous detached
poems, made under his own auspices, and at a
period of life when his judgment must be ma-

tured, to the benefit, not the detriment of his
imagination, will be eagerly received by tho
public, who will be still more inclined to en-
courage the speculation, when they learn that by
so doing they will be enriching their own libra-
ries, and contributing to the support of a de-
serving but unfortunate man of 'genius, whose
heart has always rectified the errors of his head,
and who now finds himself, " in the sere and
yellow leaf" of life, a prey to ill-health and
anxiety, with a numerous family solely depending
on his literary exertions for support. In making
this, we fear but too correct, statement, we have
no desire to appeal to the mere charity of the
community ; far from it, we put the case on
higher ground ; Mr. Leigh Hunt is a gentleman,
who for a series of years has contributed as much

to public gratification and instruction as
any writer now in existence, and those
who feel inclined to befriend him in this,
his hour of need—and to how few of us does
not that warning hour at one time or other
come !—will be less honouring him than them-
selves, less evidencing their charity than their
gratitude. The Editor of the Examiner, at a
period when that Journal was fighting almost
single-handed the battle of Reform, against the
united phalanxes of the boroughmongers, has
surely some claim on the just consideration of
his countrymen I They are now about to reap
the fruits of that seed which he contributed to
sow, and water, and bring to healthful maturity,
and should not suffer this fact to escape their
recollections at the merry-making of the harvest-
home. If the Reformers of the present day
dese r
nv e praise,caenddotfhe approbation, thosedan of the
danger,
r ,on pa
for
rs tt
hh
es d
et
rssaefwseetayrsv e a ten-
fold
a thend
th
dif-
ficulty
triumph. We have King and Government and
people with us ; they had King and Govern-
ment against them, and people indifferent. Mr.
Leigh Hunt was always an undaunted Re-
former; he avowed his principles at a season
when they were Unfashionable at Court, and mis-
understood by the country ; and is now entitled to
a full measure of justice for such consistency,
and we may add, disinterestedness. That his
proposed volume, independently of other consi-
derations, will bear republishing from its own
intrinsic merits, we have not a shadow of doubt.

Many of his poems are eminently beautiful, such

as Rimini, for instance, which needs only a
little pruning to render it a general favourite ;
while his Feast of the Poets is as graceful and
sprightly a morceau of wit and invention as any
of which modern times can boast. With all
our heart and soul we wish Mr. Hunt success
in his new speculation. He isla man of worth
and ability ; and these, as times go, are rarities
not to be lightly dealt with. Had he chosen to
turn his coat, and wear the livery of a toad•eater
or a Court sycophant, he might long ere this
have sported his carriage, and established him-
self as a wit with the Whig party ; but he pre-
ferred to trudge on foot in a homely garb, and
preserve his integrity, even though he lost the
sunshine of Court favour. We subjoin his book-.
seller's prospectus.
Though the publication of hooks by subscription is no
longer the mode, as it was in the days of Pope and Dryden,
when those eminent men resorted to it, and when Prior,
who had been an Ambassador, did not scruple to let it be
turned to his account by his friends,—and though there
are many reasons why the revival of the custom is not de-
sirable, especially in these days of universal penmanship,—
yet occasions have now and then occurred, when in this,
as in other instances, delicacy has vindicated the most de-
licate of its privileges, and converted what was objection-
able in ordinary to a means of chewing its sense of claims
out of the common path.
The uninterrupted literary labour of many years, with
the exhaustion it is calculated to produce,—exertion, still
continu, d, in a state of health always too much drawn
upon, and sometimes threatening to be fatal,—domestic
difficulties with which every man of spirit and feeling may
sympathize, and the common cause of the world of let-
ters, (for it is the particular wish, both of those who differ,
and of those who agree with them, that all other consi-
derations connected with his literary efforts, should be left
out of the question),—all these reasons, and all which they
can imply to delicate understandings, have induced
some of the friends of Mr. Leigh Hunt, to take upon
them one of the justest of offices, and endeavour to ex-
pedite for him what it might take many more anxious
months, and many another illness, to accomplish. In a
word, they would put him in advance of his difficulties.
It is proposed, for this purpose, that the Poetical
Works of Mr. Leigh Hunt, now first brought together,
and selected by
himself (with corrections and emenda-
tions, the result of his experience), and accompanied by
notes, and a new genet al preface, should be printed in one
very handsome volume, octavo, price a guinea, and pub-