The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-19 00:00:00

MEMORIAL 7 0 LEIGH 11US7.

The following letter, addressed to the editor of
the Scotsman, appeared in that journal of yester-
day :

23, Norfolk-street, Strand, W.C.,
September 16, 1868.
SIR,--As yet the grave of Leigh Hunt in Kensal
Green Cemetery is obscure and undistinguished.
During life his wide sympathies and versatile
acquirements drew around him from all quarters of
the globe friendly visitors whose opinions were as
far apart as the homes from which they came. It
is a humiliating reflection that travellers from Ame-
rica or Italy who in other years made Leigh hunt's
study the shrine of their loving pilgrimages may
have wished to visit his last resting-place, and
found no mark to guide them to it—no record, if
they have discovered it, of his many claims on
grateful recollection.

In dedicating " The Cenci " to Leigh Hunt fifty
years ago, Shelley paid him this noble tribute :
" One more gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave ;
one of more exalted toleration for all who do and
think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one
who knows better how to receive and how to confer
a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than
he can receive ; one of simpler, and, in the highest
sense of the word, of purer, life and manners, I never
knew." This friendship between Leigh Hunt and
Shelley, honourable and delightful though it was
to both, became in some measure the cause of mis-
representations which attended Leigh Hunt's
early career. A writer in All the Year Round
(vol. vii., p. 118) justly says :—" Leigh Hunt
defended the character of Shelley with so much
warmth from the aspersions which had been cast
upon it that he was in time identified with the
whole of Shelley's opinions, and suffered accordingly.
This was a signal error. As a journalist, he was
never republican, but constitutional and monarchi-
cal ; and in religion, Leigh Hunt at no time adopted
the extreme unbelief of Shelley's youthful specula-
tions. . . . His natural piety was always con-
spicuous ; and the greater spirituality of Shelley's
more mature works was not improbably owing to
his communings with a mind at once liberal and de-
vout. . . . This truly religious tendency of mind
increased and ripened with years and sorrow; and the
beautiful volume called the Religion of the Heart'
proved to a wider circle of readers how seriously
he had been misapprehended by those who
called him a scoffer and materialist." A writer in
the Cornhill Magazine (Vol. i., p. 92) points out

how much the press of England in the present dal
is indebted for its " cultivated style, elevated tone,
and independent sentiment" to Leigh Hunt, Who
exhibited a consistency, honesty, and fearlessness
that even his opponents could not but respect.
Neither personal nor political animosities, how-
ever, troubled the declining yea! a of what Carlyle
truly terms his " most pure and even exemplary'
life ; and as men of all creeds and classes delighted
then to honour the veteran poet, the genial critic,
the accomplished scholar, each of whose varied
works acquired vitality from his warmth of heart
and uprightness of mind, so all can now consistently
unite in promoting the memorial which it is pro"
posed to erect over his grave.
This project was suggested by Mr. S. C. Hall in
the Art Journal three years ago, and, after consul-
tation with Mr. Joseph Durham, A.R.A. (who
estimated the entire cost of the work at £l5O, and
who volunteered to execute a bust and pedestal for
the mere cost of the materials), he applied to friends
and admirers of the poet for support. Altogether,
in pay and promises, about £7O was the result—not
a moiety of the requisite sum. The proposal `vas
then allowed to sleep, Air. Durham, however,
making a sketch of his design awl finishing tb°
model of the portrait bust.
The pedestal will have four sides—one occuplel
with Leigh Hunt's epitaph, the next with a line
from " Abon Ben Adhem and the Angel :"---

" Write me as one that loves his fello w-men ;"
the third with Lord Lytton's estimate :
" lie had that chief requisite of a good critic—a good heart ;"
and the fourth with a jar of honey, in bas relief.
Thus much having been settled, it has been re-
cently determined to make a public appeal for the
i
remainder of the money, b3O ; to raise which 51'a
carry out the matter satisfactorily, the following
committee has been formed, viz.:--Chief-Baron Slf
F. Pollock, Messrs. Thomas Carlyle, B. W. Procter,
Charles Ratcliff, F.S.A., Alexander Ireland, •
Ward, R.A., W. C. Macready, Robert Cbahnerigt
LL.D., George Godwin, F.R.S., Charles Dent,
William Barry, Sir John Bowring, Sir Pere'
Shelley, Bart., and Captain Bertrand Flllts'
F.R.S.L. The honorary secretaries are Messrs. P.
C. Hall and Edmund Oilier ; and the hon. tree'
surer, who will be happy to receive contributions/
S. R. TOWNSHEND MAYO.