The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-05 00:00:00

HURSDAY EVE

LITERATURE.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH
HUNT ; with Reminiscences of Friends and Con-
temporaries. 3 Vols.

Thi-ougheut the long list of prose writers whose
names adorn the annals of English literature, we
cannot remember one more thoroughly delightful
to ourselves than the author of the present
" Autobiography." it requires, we are perfectly
aware, a very considerable amount of temerity
to utter any such explicit opinion during the
lifetime of a man of letters. So great, how-
ever, is our contempt for this species of critical
reservation, that we acknowledge ourselves ready at
all times, on occasion, to set it openly at defiance.
Because a man happens still to be in the flesh, we
cannot for the life of us see why his excellences
should be overlooked, or his gifts or accomplishments
depreciated. It appears to us a very scurvy trick,
that of compelling intellectual celebrities to graduate
through the grave to the honours of a full and per-
fected reputation. Yet such has long been the cus-
tom in society, insomuch so that the majority of
persons are disposed to underrate, in every possible
manner, the merits and capacities of their contempo-
raries simply from that very circumstance, because
they are their contemporaries. Against such indi-
viduals we cannot with sufficient earnestness express
our sentiments of complete and diametrical opposition.
It is these people who make up the number of howlers
after the good old times," meaning the times of
bloodshed, and brutality, and ignora❑ce • and who,
shutting their eyes against all that is noble and com-
mendable in these latter days, proclaim the present
age an age of decadence and degeneration. Tney
little reflect that the same depreciative cries have been
raised in all ages without distinction. They fail to
recognise their own likeness in the person of that
Smellfungus celebrated in the " Sentimental
Journey." Our abomination of the whole class is so

cordial in its nature, that it is with a secret rapture
that we call to mind the manner in which one of the

genus was " put down" by the surly indifference o
Dr. JohLson It is related of this un,

fortunate Wight by Washington Irving,
that after sitting for a short time in
the presence of the great moralist, -he got up to take
leave, expressing a fear that a longer visit might be
troublesome. "Not in the least, sir," said Johnson ;
"I had forgotten you were in the room." So entirely
do we dissent from their views upon most subjects,
that in scarcely any can we detect that moral
poverty which they declare to be everywhere now-
a-days prevalent. In our native literature, for ex-
ample, we yield the palm in scarcely any particular
to preceding generations. In history, if we have
not a Robertson or a Lyttleton, we have a greater than
either in Macaulay. Among our poets, if we cannot
number Robert Herrick or Suckling, we have a
Barry Cornwall and a Tennyson. As a novelist we
cannot claim a Fielding or a Smollett, but we can
boast of a Dickens. After the utterance of opinions
like these, somewhat less surprise may be
felt at our rashness in designating Leigh
Hunt as one of the most delightful prose
writers in the language. Delightful at all times, he
becomes especially so whenever his subject will
allow of his being more than usually conversational.
It may be conjectured, therefore, how pleasantly he
can gossip in that most conversational of all kinds of
authorship, autobiography. Out of his own personal
recollections he has contrived to compile three vo-

lumes so charming in their character that we have
perused them from first to last with unflagging
avidity. Everywhere fascinating, his style assumes
to itself an unusual grace, where, like his favourites,
the old Italian writers, " his prose falls a-talking of
his poetry." His own remembrances are fruitful of
incidents, humorous or pathetic, during the years
which followed his birth, on the 19th of October,
1784, at the beautiful village of Southgate in Mid-
dlesex. His reminiscences of friends and contemporaries
furnish him again with an additional store of the most
relishable anecdotes. One while, for example, he re-
minds us, with an almost audible chuckle, of Charles
Lamb's exclamation to a brother whist player re-
markable for hands more clever than clean--." M., if
dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold l"
Another time he tells us of Coleridge's remark on
hearing of the death of his savage old schoolmaster,
" It was lucky that the cherubim who took him to
heaven were nothing but faces and wings, or he
would infallibly have flogged them by the way !"
Hear our autobiographer again in his most jocular
mood recounting a circumstance connected with a
visit once paid to him by Wordsworth. " Under the
study," says he, " in which my visitor and I were
sitting, was an archway, leading to a nursery ground;
a cart happened to go through it while I was in-
quiring whether he would take any refreshment; and
he uttered, in so lofty a voice, the words, Anything
which is going forward,' that I felt inclined to ask
him whether he would take a piece of the cart."
As he observes immediately afterwards, " Lamb
would certainly have done it," but then
Lamb was so peculiarly constituted that, as
Leigh Hunt says of him in another part, and
in his own most felicitous manner, " One could have
imagined him cracking a jest in the teeth of a ghost,
and than melting away into thin air himself, out of a
sympathy for the awful." It is iu these epigrammatic
sketches of character that our author is ever most
happy, touching each one's identity off with peculiar
vividness in a few syllables. What an exquisite
notion he gives us of Mrs. Spencer, where he calls her
" a delicious little old woman, the delight of all the
children of bar acquaintance." Then hear him talk
of the morning reader named Salt, who was remark-
able for speaking in his throat, " with a sound as if he
were weak and corpulent," and famous also at
Christ Church, for saying " murracles" instead of
" miracles"—and you have the man at once conjured
up before you visibly, corporeally, and most cer-
tainly audibly. Equally graphic in their force
are the descriptions given towards the commence-
ment of this autobiography of the author's
childish recollections, not only at the time when his
family were struggling on "between quiet and dis-
turbance, between placid readings and frightful
knocks at the door, and sickness, and calamity," but
likewise on the memorable occasion when a certain
old lady of quality astounded him "by letting her
false teeth slip out, and clapping them in again. I
had no idea," says he, "of the existence of such
' "
phenomena, and could almost as soon have expected
her to take off her head and re-adjust it." About this
period it is that he calls to mind seeing Mr. Pitt,
thin and gaunt, in a blue coat, buckskin breeches, and
boots, powder and pigtail, " with his hat off his fore-
head and his nose in the air." When he heard Pitt,
moreover, speaking in the Commons in his " loud,
important, and hollow voice," and when the persons
he appealed to said " Hear, hear,"
our author, like a
child as he was, thought that they said "Dear! dear!" in
objection, and wondered that Pitt did not seem in the
least disconcerted. Anything, however,
ascslionigstertshraotughchhriisst mcehmuorrc:
yh
receives a flavour racy of our author's hiut
mmattersnot whether recollections of childhood or of manhood,
yallupdroincegssto otfheP
probability once the
monastery garden, he says,
calledtWhehevn the Garden, and in all very
" Its only delicious crop
for many years has been pavement." Calling to mind
one of his schoolfellows, who made game even of the
terrible pedagogue Boyer, he says of the former," He
felicitously, ,
too, he
not pencils otl the
get it out of
my head that the Americans are Englishmen
was a regular wag ; and would snatch his jokes out of
the very flame and fury of the master like snakdra-
owherfe.elhice
it w
gyoann.
k" ffees,
w
with the poetry and romance taken out of
them ; and that there is one great coun-
ter built along their coast from north to
south, behind which they are all standing like so
many linendrapers." He describes the bust of Fa-
broni (a late good-natured critic and bishop), erected
to his memory in the Campo Santo at Pisa, mention-
ing that the features are so full of a certain jolly
gusto, that he longed to have eaten macaroni with
him—and we behold the bust at once, as Leigh Hunt
depicts it, with Fabroni for ever " living in inscrip-
tion," and " looking treats in stone." Equally ad-
mirable is his mention of the fresco paintings in that
same cemetery by such men as Orgagna, Memim
Giotto, and Benozzo—pictures in which the figures
represented " are like a dream of humanity during
the twilight of creation." His words, moreover, are
quite as epigrammatic in defining the charactistics of a
whole country as in recording any of the minor details
of his composition. Having observed that "Italy is a
land of volcanoes, more or less subdued," he suddenly
exclaims, "it is a great grapery, built over a flue."
When commenting on the sense of wonder with which
the Italians regard British hardihood and rashness,
he remarks that " An English mail-coach, with that
cauliflower of human beings a-top of it, bumping from
side to side, would make the hearts of a Tuscan city
die within them." Once while, expatiaating on the
picturesque appearance of the Genoese domiciles, he
says, " some of the windows have vines trailed over
them, not in the scanty fashion of our creepers, but
like great luxuriant green hair hanging over the
house's eyes"—a description somewhat kindred to one
in the sixteenth number of " David Copperfield." If
our author, who has a keen eye for colour, sees a
fisherman with a red cap on, floating in his boat across
the bay of Naples, he says of the cap, it is like
a scarlet bud in the blue atmosphere." He meets in
Piedmont with an Italian gentleman, Whose name,
says he, " was a piece of music—Luigi Rivarola."
Who can describe a sailor's la alk aboard ship during
rough weather better than Leigh Hunt ? tt He
rolled about," says he, speaking of a genuine Jack
Tar—" he rolled about with the vessel as if his feet
had suckers" The whole account given in this por-
tion of the " Autobiography" of the . voyage towards
the Mediterranean, when "the winds and rain toge-
ther ran blind and howling along the vessel's side,"
• is worthy, in its surprising vividness, of a similar in-
cident in the history of Pantagruel. The boat, into
the small cabin of which the author and his family
k were huddled, in its tumbling about is said to have

ING, SEPTEMBE

" looked like a wash-house in a fit." " Here it was,"
be writes, I did toy best to do my duty and keep
up the spirits of those at out me ; and your
nervousness being a great dealer in your
joke fantastic, I succeeded apparently with all,
and certainly with the children." Of his success
with his children he gives an illustration, in which
the droll and the horrid are strangely mixed together.
Some unfortunate ducks were on this vessel, " kept in
miserable coops, over which the sea constantly break-
ing, the poor wretches were drenched and beaten to
death." Having mentioned this, Leigh Hunt descends
to the consideration of his children in the cabin be-
low, who, not being aware of any danger, " were as
gay as confinement and uneasy beds would allow
them to be. With the poor ducks," he continues, "I
made them very merry one night by telling them to
listen when the next sea broke over us, and they
would hear an acquaintance of theirs laughing. The
noise they made with their quacking, when they
gathered breath after the suffocation of the salt water,
was exactly like what I said : the children listened,
and at every fresh agony there was a shout." To us
the whole scene is wonderfully natural. Although
our author, in his way of recording it,
deals for once rather lightly with the
painful, be is exquisitely sensitive in regard to the
horrible, as may be seen from his manner of re-
counting the following hideous act of cruelty :
"It was during ley infancy, if I am not mistaken,

that there lived at Hampstead (a very unfit place for
such a resident), a man whose name I suppress lust there
should be possessors of is surviving, and who was a
famous cock-fighter. He was rich and idle, and there.
fore had no bounds to set to the unhappy passions that
raged within him. It is related of this man, that, having
lost a bet on a favourite bird, he tied the noble animal
to a spit in his kitchen before the fire, and notwithstand-
ing the screams of the sufferer and the indignant cries
of the beholders, whose interference he wildly resisted
with the poker, actually persisted in keeping it there
burning, till he fell down in his fury and died."
Insomuch has the writer of this autobiography an
abhorrence of regarding the pain of any living crea-
ture with indifference that for the first time, perhaps,
since the death of the father of angling, he here speaks
with peculiar severity of Izaac Walton. As a species
of relief to the last quotation we transcribe the fol-
lowing most humorous description, in which the
author is alluding to the period of the threatened in-
vasion of England by the French, when he himself
-was enrolled among the St. James's Volunteers :
" We had been a regiment for some time, without a
colonel. The colonel was always about to be declared,
but declared he was not; and meantime we mustered
about a thousand strong; and were much amazed, and,
perhaps, a little indignant. At length the moment ar-
rived—the colonel was named; he was to be introduced
to us; and that nothing might be wanting to our dignity,
he was a lord, and a friend of the minister, and nephew
to the victor aforesaid.

Our parade was the court-yard of Burlington House.
The whole regiment attended. We occupied three sides
of the ground. In front of us were the great gates,
longing to be opened. Suddenly the word is given, ➢ly
iord is at hand!' Open burst the gates—up strikes the
music. 'Pre.ent arms!' vociferates the major.
"In dashes his lordship, and is pitched right over his
horse's head to the ground.

" It was the most unfortunate anticlimax that could
have happened. Skill, grace, vigour. address, example,
ascendancy, mastery, victory, all were, in a manner, to
have been presented to us in the heroical person of the
noble colonel; and here they were, prostrated at our feet
—ejected—cast out—humiliated—ground to the earth;
subjected (for his merciful construction) to the least
fellow-soldier that stood among us, upright on his feet."
In the midst of the intense drollery of this
description, we can detect the sarcastic tone
of the author of " Captain Sword and Captain
Pen ;" as also in the witty sentence previously
occurring, that " a bullet is of all pills the one that
most requires gilding." Occasionally our author takes
too broad a license with the language, as where he
coins such words as " unforgivingnebs," " untimeli-
ness," and " unyieldingness. ' But whenever, as it
sometimes happens, his verbal coinage is for the sake
of a joke we welcome it with rejoicing instead
of depreciation. It is thus on the occa-
sion when a friend gives him a vine stick
as a souvenir of Italian scenery. The giver, he
says with a jocularity that would have tickled Elia
amazingly, " came to Mariano to take leave of us ;
so we christened the stick, as they do a seventy-four,
and he stood rod-father." From the more serious
sections of the narrative we would eagerly present to
our readers those in which Leigh Hunt makes his
peace with the memories of Lord Byron and Sir Wal-
ter Scott, writing of them both in a manner that
does honour to his gentleness of heart, and proves be-
yond all gainsaying his manliness and magnanimity.
As about the most attractive features in the auto-
biography, we reserve them for the perusal of all
persons in the original, satisfied that by so doing we
shall be holding out to the intelligent a scarcely re-
sistible temptation. One passage, however, relating
to Sir Walter Scott, we must be permitted to
transcribe—it is a passage which, as far as the esti-
mation of the noble-minded is concerned, will be like
crowning Leigh Hunt with a crown of laurels :--
"It can be of no consequence to the memory of such
a man what I said or thought of him, whether before
his death or after; but for my own sake, since I am
forced to speak of such things in a work like the present,
I may be allowed to state, that whatever hostility I was
forced to maintain with his politics, and so far with him-
self, I had the pleasure of expressing my regret for the
mistakes which I bad made about him, long before I ex-
perienced their ill t frees. I will add, that long after
those effects, and when he was lying sick in London on
his way to his last home, I called every morning at his
door (anonymously; fur I doubttd whether my name
would please him) to furnish a respectful bulletin of his
health to a daily paper, in which I suggested its appear-
ance; and I will not conceal, that as I loved the huma-
nities in his wonderful pages, in spite of the politics
which accompanied them, so I mourned for his closing
days, and shed tears at his death."
It is said by our author, when speaking of Sir
Walter in regard to genius, that he was " perhaps
the least quotable for sententiousness, or wit, or any
other memorable brevity, in the whole circle of
illustrious writers." The remark is novel to us,
and, we cannot help thinking no less correct
than novel. Certainly the same thing cannot be
said of Leigh Hunt himself; of which, if further il-
lustration be required, we could give them from this
very work before us abundantly. Thus, for its sen-
tentious humour, the following mention of Mr. Kin-
naird is to the last degree admirable—it is in evidence
of his loyalty :—" After dinner he begged that God
save the King' might be played to him on the piano-
forte; to which he listened as f his soul had taken its
hat off." Contrasting broadly with this, what a fine
thought that is that the world is not old enough to
know better than it does, " because we yet live but in
the tuning of its instruments." Of poetry Leigh
Hunt always talks with the taste and genius of one
qualified to discourse on that divine inspiration. In-
stance this his question, " Who does not learn to
love everything in the all-embracing sweetness of
poetry ?" And again, "It is our business to be
grateful for what a poet sets before us, rather than to
be wishing that his peaches were nectarines, or his
Falernian champagne." One more laughable anec-
dote we must cull from this delightful autobiography.
It is as follows :
" An amusing story is told of Thornton, which may
show the quick and ingenious, but, perhaps, not very
feeling turn of his mind. It is said that he was once dis-
covered by his father sitting in a box at the theatre,
when he ought to have been in his rooms at college.
The old gentleman addressing him accordingly, that
youngster turned in pretended amazement to the people
about him, and said, Smoke old wigsby, who takes me
for his son.' Thornton, senior, upon this, indignantly
hastens out of the box, with the manifest intention of
setting off for Oxford, and finding the rooms vacant.
Thornton, junior, takes double post-horses, and is there
before him, quietly sitting in his chair. He rises from it
on his father's appearance, and cries, Ah, dear sir, is it
you? To what am I indebted for this unexpected
pleasure?'"
In writing with the gusto of a humorist of the meet-
ing between the little Prince of Monaco and the
Emperor Napoleon, Leigh Hunt expresses an uncer-
tainty as to whether it took place on the occasion of
Napoleon's journey to or his return from Elba. It
was in the vicinity of-Cannes, at the commencement
of the triumphal march to Paris, which inaugurated
the famous Hundred Days. Another portion of the
work, which having simply regard to details,seems to us
to require emendation, is that in which our author, with-
out naming his authorities, fixes Cuccaro as the birth-
place of Columbus. Apart from all such minor
particulars, these three volumes of " Autobio-
graphy" form an inestimable contribution
towards the history of British literature.
They 3 ield, moreover, a thousand beautiful tokens of
excellence, on the part of their writer, justifying
those who have come to look upon his name as one
among their "household words," a name associated
with the love of Paulo, and the woods of Rimini, and
those pastoral charms abounding in our English land-
scapes, in the delineation of which, in melodious
verse, Leigh Hunt has acquired for himself a sweet
and enviable celebrity. Between the publication of
his Autobiography and the present criticism upon it,
the author's elder brother (mentioned affectionately
in its pages) has breathed his last, a circumstance
which can only tend to increase the sympathies to-
wards Leigh Hunt of those who, like ourselves,
know him merely through his writings, while
it can only deepen their aspirations for his owls
longevity.

When penetration is guided by malevolence and
hate, it sees only that which is superficial; but when bene-
volence and love direct it, it fathoms men and things, and
may hope to attain unto the most elevated mysteries.
Eliza Cook's Journal.

CONVICTS FOR HOBART TOWN,—The hired convict
ship Hyderabad is appointed to sail from Queenstown, Ireland,
with 400 male convicts, on Thursday next.

• _ _
We understand that Captain Herbert Wynn, of
the 7th Fusiliers, will offer himself as a candidate for the
representation of the county of Montgomery, on Protectionist
principles, in consequence of the death of his uncle, the
Right lion. Charles Williams Wynn.—Herald.

R 5, 1850.