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scrupulous satire against the poets of the cockney school as political opponents. Leigh Hunt was admired by many, and ridiculed by others as the master of this school of poets, when, in truth, he was only their encourager and sympathizer. Hunt had a visit of thanks from Mr. Wordsworth for advocating the cause of his genius. Keats, in a latter to Mr. Bailey, wrote:—

"There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Edinburgh Magazine. I never read anything

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so virulent, accusing him of the greatest crimes,
depreciating his wife, his poetry, his habits, his
company, his conversation. These philippics are
to come out in numbers, called The Cockney
School of Poetry. There has been but one num-
ber published--that on Hunt. *
I have
no doubt the second number was intended for me,
but have hopes of its non-appearance from the
following advertisement in last Sunday's Exami-
ner :-- To Z.-The writer of the article signed Z.,
in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, for October,
1817, is invited to send his address to the printer
of the Examiner, in order that justice may be ex-
ecuted on the proper person.'"

Of Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb, Mr. Hunt gives some fifty pages of very delightful reminiscences. Wordsworth, in his younger days, must have been too solemn, uncompromising and dignified in his manners to tally with the easier grace of Hunt. The following, in allusion to the visit before mentioned, sufficiently illustrates their difference:

scribes him in his study, which was adorned with casts of the Apollo and Venus,-strolling in his garden and about the country,or sailing in a boat, which was his favorite diversion. "Flowers," he says, or a happy face, or the hearing a congenial remark, would make his eyes sparkle with delight; while he would droop into an aspect of dejection when he saw the miserable-looking children of the lace-making village, or thought of his own children of whom he had been deprived by Chancery."

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"As to his children, the reader perhaps is not called free on many accounts, and so proud of its aware, that in this country of England, so justly Englishman's castle,'-of the house, which nothfrom him to-morrow, who holds a different opinion ing can violate, a man's offspring can be taken from the Lord Chancellor in faith and morals. Hume's, if he had any, might have been taken. Gibbon's might have been taken. The virtuous Condorcet, if he had been an Englishman and a father, would have stood no chance.

"Plato, for his Republic, would have stood as little; and Mademoiselle de Gournay might have been torn from the arms of her adopted father Montaigne, convicted beyond redemption of seeing farther than the walls of the Court of Chancery. That such things are not done often, I believe; that they may be done oftener than people suspect, I believe also; for they are transacted with closed doors, and the details are forbidden to transpire.”

Shelley's "princeliness" of generosity, his benevolence and sensibility, were accompanied by a playfulness and love of frolic. "Under the study in which my visitor and I"It was a moot point when he entered your were sitting was an archway, leading to a nursery ground; a cart happened to go through it while I was inquiring whether he would take any refreshment; and he uttered in so lofty a voice, the words, Anything which is going forward, that I felt in clined to ask him whether he would take a piece of the cart. Lamb would certainly have done it. But this was a levity which would neither have been so proper on my part, after so short an acquaintance, nor very intelligible perhaps, in any sense of the word, to the serious poet. There are good-humored warrants for smiling, which lie deeper even than Mr. Wordsworth's thoughts for tears."

Thirty years afterward, when they met again, the manner of the great poet appeared greatly improved, "quite natural and noble, with a cheerful air of animal as well as spiritual confidence.”

Hunt's bosom friend was Shelley. After his second marriage he resided at Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, where Hunt, with his family, paid him a visit, and de

room whether he would begin with some half-pleasant, half-pensive joke, or quote something Greek, or ask some question about public affairs." He and Hunt once, riding in a stage-coach where their only companion was a very silent, "grim" looking old lady, "Shelley startled her into a look of most ludicrous astonishment," by suddenly addressing his friend, in his enthusiastic tone of voice, with a quotation from Shakspeare: "Hunt!

'For Heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings!" "The old lady," says Hunt, "looked on the coach floor as if expecting to see us take seats accordingly."

Hunt's love for Keats was only second to that which he cherished for Shelley. The knowledge reaching him after Keats's death that the poet had at one time distrusted his

friendship,- though he comforts himself with the reflection that "it was sickness, and soon passed away," deeply wounded his sincere and affectionate nature. It was a suspicion wholly undeserved, and was overcome before Hunt dreamed of its existence. A letter which Keats's devoted friend, Mr. Severn, received from Leigh Hunt a few days after Keats's death at Rome, illustrates so fully Hunt's warm and simple affection, and is so touchingly delicate and sympathizing, that, as we can never read it ourselves without emotion, we are induced to transcribe it for those who may not have ⚫ seen it in Mr. Milnes' "Life and Letters of Keats."

"VALE OF HEALTH, Hampstead,

March 8th, 1821.

"DEAR SEVERN: You have concluded, of course, that I have sent no letters to Rome, because I was aware of the effect they would have on Keats's mind; and this is the principal cause,- for besides what I have been told of his emotions about let ters in Italy, I remember his telling me on one occasion, that, in his sick moments, he never wished to receive another letter, or ever to see another face, however friendly. But still I should have written to you had I not been almost at death's door myself. You will imagine how ill I have been, when you hear that I have just begun writing again for the Examiner' and Indicator,' after an interval of several months, during which my flesh wasted from me in sickness and melancholy. Judge how often I thought of Keats, and with what feelings. Mr. Brown tells me he is comparatively calm now, or rather quite so. If he can bear to hear of us, pray tell him-but he knows it already, and can put it in better language than any man. I hear he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that be shall not recover. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation that he cannot bear to think he shall die. But if this persuasion should happen no longer to be so strong upon him, or if he can now put up with such attempts to console him, remind him of what I have said a thousand times, and that I still (upon my honor, Severn,) think always, that I have seen too many stances of recovery from apparently desperate cases of consumption, not to indulge in hope to the very last. If he cannot bear this, tell himtell that great poet and noble-hearted man-that we shall all bear his memory in the most precious part of our hearts, and that the world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do. Or if this again will trouble his spirit, tell him we shall never cease to remember and love him, and, that the most skeptical of us has faith enough in the high things that nature puts into our heads, to think that all who are of one accord in mind and heart are journeying to one and the same place, and shall unite somehow or other again, face to face, mutually

VOL. VII. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

in

conscious, mutually delighted. Tell him he is only before us on the road, as he was in everything else; or, whether you tell him the latter or no, tell him the former, and add that we shall never forget he was so, and that we are coming after him. The tears are again in my eyes, and I must not afford to shed them. The next letter I write shall be more to yourself, and a little more refreshing to your spirits, which we are very sensible must have been very greatly taxed. But whether our friend dies or not, it will not be among the least lofty of our recollections by-andby, that you helped to smooth the sick bed of so fine a being.

Your sincere friend,

"LEIGH HUNT."

says,

Of Charles Lamb, Mr. Hunt there has never been a true portrait. His face resembled that of Bacon," with less worldly of the head both in Shelley and Keats has vigor and more sensibility." The small size been a puzzle to phrenologists. Hunt could not get on either their hats or Lord Byron's. Lamb's head, on the contrary, was large in proportion to his body, or rather to his limbs, which were fragile. Though a man of strict veracity in the ordinary sense of the word, Lamb had a fondness for confounding the borders of theoretical truth and falsehood. He said to a person who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, that he valued himself on being a matter-of-lie man;" and at another time he said that "truth was precious, and not to be wasted on everybody."

Hazlitt compared Coleridge's genius to a spirit, all head and wings, eternally floating about in etherealities. "He gave me,” says Hunt, "a different impression. I fancied him a good-natured wizard, very fond of earth, and conscious of reposing with weight enough in his easy chair, but able to conjure his etheraleties about him in the twinkling of an eye." Hunt refers us to his "Imagination and Fancy" for a critical summary of his opinions respecting Coleidge's poetry, of which however he here says, "I take it upon the whole to have been the finest of its time;" and again, "Of all the muse's mysteries,' he was as great a high priest as Spenser; and Spenser himself might have gone to Highgate to hear him talk, and thank him for his 'Ancient Mariner.'"

Partly through the urgency of Shelley, who had been some time abroad, partly to recruit his own health and his wife's, and chiefly on account of a proposal made by

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afterward.

Lord Byron to set up a liberal periodical | friend Mr. Williams was found near a tower, four publication in conjunction with him (Byron) miles distant from its companion. That of the and Shelley, Hunt went with his family to other third party in the boat, Charles Vivian, the Italy. Moreover, while his brother John seaman, was not discovered till nearly three weeks was to endeavor, in England, to reanimate the Examiner, Leigh Hunt was to use simultaneous exertion in Italy to secure new aid to their prospects and new friends to the cause of liberty.

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The remains of Shelley and Mr. Williams were burned, after the good ancient fashion, and gathered into coffers. Those of Mr. Williams were subsequently taken to England. Shelley's were interred at Rome, in the Protestant burial-ground, the place which he had so touchingly described in recording After a very long and stormy passage, its reception of Keats. The ceremony of the burnenlivened in description by that talismanic ing was alike beautiful and distressing. Trelaw power which our author possesses of turn-ney, who had been the chief person concerned in ing everything into mirth, poetry, or instruc-kindness by taking the most active part on this ascertaining the fate of his friends, completed his tion, he arrived at Leghorn, where he met last mournful occasion. He and his friend Captain Lord Byron and Mr. Trelawney. He visited Shenley were first upon the ground, attended by the former at his country residence at Monte proper assistants. Lord Byron and myself arrived Nero, where he lived with Madame Guic- shortly afterward. His lordship got out of his carriage, but wandered away from the spectacle, cioli, in "a salmon-colored house," which, in and did not see it. I remained inside the carriage, a hot Italian sun, suggested no very hopeful now looking on, now drawing back with feelings ideas of comfort or of poetry. Shelley that were not to be witnessed. hastened from his villeggiatura at Lerici, to meet his friend, and accompanied him to Pisa, where Hunt was to take up his residence. He remained a day or two; and after spending the last afternoon delightfully together in wandering about Pisa, the friends separa-traordinary part of his history. Among the mated never to meet again. On the night of the same day Shelley took a post-chaise for Leghorn, where he was, next day, to depart for his home, with his friend Capt. Williams,

of Lerici.

"I entreated him," says Hunt, "if the weather was violent, not to give way to his daring spirit and venture to sea. He promised me he would not, and it seems he did set off later than he otherwise would have done, and at, apparently, a more favorable moment. I never saw him more." The same night there was a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. Mr. and Mrs. Hunt were anxious, but hoped their friend might either not have left, or arrived in safety before its commencement. Trelawney came to Pisa and told them he was missing.

"A dreadful interval took place of more than a week, during which every inquiry and every fond hope were exhausted. At the end of that period our worst fears were confirmed. A body had been washed on shore, near the town of Via Reggio, which, by the dress and stature, was known to be our friend's Keats's last volume also (the Lamia, &c.,) was found open in the jacket pocket. He had probably been reading it, when surprised by the storm. It was my copy. I had told him to keep it till he gave it to me again with his own hands. So I would not have it from any other. It was burned with his remains. The body of his

selves the little comfort of supposing, that lovers of books and antiquity, like Shelley and his companion, Shelley in particular with his Greek enthusiasm, would not have been sorry to foresee this part of their fate. The mortal part of him, too, was saved from corruption; not the least exterials for burning, as many of the gracefuller and more classical articles as could be procured-frankincense, wine, &c.-were not forgotten; and to the flame arising from the funeral pile was extrathese Keats's volume was added. The beauty of ordinary. The weather was beautifully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft and lucid, kissed the shore as if to make peace with it. The yellow sand and blue sky were intensely contrasted with one another; marble mountains touched the air with ward heaven in vigorous amplitude, waving and coolness; and the flame of the fire bore away toquivering with a brightness of inconceivable beauty. It seemed as though it contained the glassy essence of vitality. You might have expected a seraphic countenance to look out of it, turning once more before it departed, to thank the friends that had done their duty.

"None of the mourners, however, refused them

"Shelley, when he died, was in his thirtieth year. His face was small, but well-shaped, particularly the mouth and chin, the turn of which was very sensitive and graceful. His side-face upon the whole was deficient in strength, and his features would not have told well in a bust; but when fronting and looking at you attentively, his aspect had a certain seraphical character that would have suited a portrait of John the Baptist, or the angel whom Milton describes as holding a reed 'tipt with fire. Nor would the most religious mind, had it known him, have objected to the comparison; for, with all his skepticism, Shelley's disposition was truly said to have been anything but irreligious. He was pious toward nature, toward his friends, toward the whole human race, toward the meanest insect of the forest. He did himself an injustice with the public, in using the popular name of the

Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it | by hopes and fears, the latter of which were solely with the most vulgar and tyrannical notions too soon realized. Lord Byron's highly of a God made after the worst human fashion; and did not sufficiently reflect, that it was often used by a juster devotion to express a sense of the great Mover of the universe. When I heard of the catastrophe that overtook him, it seemed as if this spirit, not sufficiently constituted like the rest of the world, to obtain their sympathy, yet gifted with a double portion of love for all living things, had been found dead in a solitary corner of the earth, its wings stiffened, its warm heart cold; the relics of a misunderstood nature, slain by the ungenial

elements."

Hunt's family occupied, at Pisa, a part of Lord Byron's residence on the river Arno. Here Lord Byron, under the influence of his well-known "hippocrene," was occupied in writing Don Juan, and an intimacy commenced between the two poets, which, being founded rather in expediency than congeniality, was not of long duration. The letters of Byron, which our author considers to be an appropriate introduction to their acquaintance, have no very especial interest, and seem to serve better the purpose of "filling up" than any other. Indeed, the whole account of our author's intercourse with his noble friend, and afterwards "bitter enemy," is far less attractive than other portions of the book. Though Byron set a high value upon Hunt's honest and sincere admiration, and apparently sympathized with his liberal views and objects, yet when they came to see each other more intimately it is well known that a mutual repugnance arose, and at length (lightly as Hunt now refers to it) flamed up almost into hatred. Lord Byron had evidently a secret delight in the vanity of his companion, so much more simple and displayful than his own.

Hunt says: "Lord Byron liked to imitate Johnson, and say, 'Why, sir,' in a high, mouthing way, rising and looking about him." He does not perceive that his Lordship, while jocularly assuming the Johnson, was, in reality, playing off the conceit and toadyism of his (Hunt's) unconscious Boswell.

In the fall Hunt removed his family to Genoa, where Mrs. Shelley had preceded them, and found houses both for Lord Byron's family and his, at Albaro, a neighboring village. Hunt's family and Mrs. Shelley occupied the Casa Negroto. Lord Byron lived near them in the Casa Saluzzi. Here they received the first number of their new Quarterly, The Liberal, accompanied

raised expectations being in some measure disappointed, his interest cooled off, and after four numbers The Liberal was no more. These, however, contained the "Vision of Judgment," some vigorous essays of Hazlitt and Shelley's beautiful translation of the "May-day Night," from Goethe. Hunt says that he himself wrote nearly half of the whole publication, but not, he thinks, in his

best manner.

Of Genoa,-"Genoa the superb,"-of which the proverb says, "it has a sea without fish, land without trees, men without faith, and women without modesty," our author tells better things, and gives a new view of the "city of palaces," so often described by travellers. We refer our readers to the description of its aspect as seen from the sea; the account of its streets and palaces, its men and women, its churches, and of a religious procession which he witnessed there, in which was borne a wax-work representation of Saint Antonio kneeling before the Virgin, reminding him strongly of the ancient paganism. "The son of Myrrha,” he says, "could not look more lover-like than St. Antonio, nor Venus more polite than the Virgin; and the flowers stuck all about (the favorite emblem of the Cyprian youth) completed the likeness to an ancient festival of Adonis." Of the climate he says:

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'You learn for the first time in this climate, what An English artist of any enthusiasm might shed colors really are. No wonder it produces painters. tears of vexation, to think of the dull medium through which blue and red come to him in his own atmosphere, compared with this. One day we saw a boat pass us, which instantly reminded contained nothing but an old boatman in a red us of Titian, and accounted for him; and yet it cap, and some women with him in other colors, one of them in a bright yellow petticoat. But a red cap in Italy goes by you, not like a mere cap, what it is, an intense specimen of the color of red. much less anything vulgar or butcher-like, but like It is like a scarlet bud in the blue atmosphere.

The old boatman, with his brown hue, his white shirt, and his red cap, made a complete picture; and so did the women and the yellow petticoat. I have seen pieces of orange-colored silk hanging out against a wall at a dyer's, which gave the eye a pleasure truly sensual. Some of these boatmen are very fine men. I was rowed to shore one day by a man the very image of Kemble. He had nothing but his shirt on, and it was really grand which all his limbs came into play as he pulled to see the mixed power and gracefulness with the oars, occasionally turning his heroic profile to

give a glance behind him at other boats. They generally row standing, and pushing from them."

From Genoa Hunt removed to Florence. Having heard, at the former place, nothing in the streets but the talk of money, he hailed it as a good omen that in Florence the two first words which caught his ear were Fiori and Donne-flowers and women.

He took up his abode at the neighboring village of Maiano, on the slope of one of the Fiesolan hills. Here he was surrounded by classical associations.

"Out of the windows of one side of our house, we saw the turret of the Villa Gherardi, to which, according to his biographers, his 'joyous company' resorted in the first instance. A house belonging to the Machiavelli was nearer, a little to the left; and farther to the left, among the blue hills, was the white village of Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. The house is still in possession of the family. From our windows on the other side we saw, close to us, the Fiesole of antiquity and of Milton, the site of the Boccacciohouse before mentioned still closer, the Decameron's Valley of Ladies at our feet; and we looked over toward the quarter of the Mugnone and of a house of Dante, and in the distance beheld the mountains of Pistoia. Lastly, from the terrace in front, Florence lay clear and cathedralled before us, with the scene of Redi's Bacchus rising on the other side of it, and the Villa of Arcetri, illustrious for Galileo. Hazlitt, who came to see me there, (and who afterward, with one of his felicitous images, described the state of mind in which he found me, by saying that I was moulting,') beheld the scene around us with the admiration natural to a lover of old folios and great names, and confessed, in the language of Burns, that it was a sight to enrich the eyes."

Notwithstanding his boast of the power of "pitching" his soul "from Tuscany into York street," Hunt began to long for the air of his native country. He not only missed London, but he missed his native English oaks and elms; and he compares the natural features of the two countries, like a true Englishman, quite to the advantage of his own. The fortunes of the Examiner and its editors had now come to a crisis, and it was necessary to return to England. Our author took leave of Mariano with a dry eye; Beccaccio and the Valley of Ladies notwithstanding. Before taking leave of Italy altogether, however, he lingers to make some remarks upon the insect tribes peculiar to the south of Europe. We quote his description of the fire-fly, well known in our own country :—

"But there is one insect which is equally harmless and beautiful. It succeeds the noisy cicala of an evening; and is of so fairy-like a nature and lustre, that it would be almost worth coming into the south to look at it, if there were no other attraction. I allude to the fire-fly. Imagine thousands of flashing diamonds every night, powdering the ground, the trees, and the air, especially in the darkest places, and in the corn-fields. They give at once a delicacy and brilliance to Italian darkness inconceivable. It is the glow-worm, winged, and flying in crowds. In England it is the female alone that can be said to give light; that of the male, who is the exclusive possessor of the wings, is hardly perceptible. Worm' is a wrong word, the creature being a real insect. The Tuscan name is luceiola, little-light. In Genoa they call them cæe-belle, (chiare-belle,) clear and pretty. When held in the hand, the little creature is discovered to be a dark-colored beetle, but without the hardness or sluggish look of the beetle tribe. The light is contained in the under part of the extremity of the abdomen, exhibiting a dull, goldencolored partition by day, and flashing occasionally by daylight, especially when the hand is shaken. At night the flashing is that of the purest and most lucid fire, spangling the vineyards and olivetrees, and their dark avenues, with innumerable stars. Its use is not known. In England, and I believe here, the supposition is that it is a signal of love. It affords no perceptible heat, but is supposed to be phosphoric. In a dark room, a single one is sufficient to flash a light against the wall. I have read of a lady in the West Indies who could see to read by the help of three under a glass, as long as they chose to accommodate her. During our abode in Genoa a few of them were commonly in our rooms all night, going about like little sparkling elves. It is impossible not to think of something spiritual in seeing the progress of one of them through a dark room. You only know it by the flashing of its lamp, which takes place every three or four inches apart, sometimes oftener, thus marking its track in and out of the apartment, or about it. It is like a little fairy lines in Herrick, inviting his mistress to come to taking its rounds. These insects remind us of the him at night-time, and they suit them still better than his English ones:

Their light the glow-worms lend thee;
The shooting stars attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow,

Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"

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