he himself has explained, nothing whatever belonging to London or the land of Cockayne, but to his having imbued his mind long and deeply with the poetry, and, as a matter of course, with the poetic language of our older writers. In a wider acquaintance with nature, the world, and literature, these have vanished from his style; and I know of no more manly, English, and chastely vigorous style than that of his poems in general. In conformity with the strictures of various critics, he has, moreover, re-written his fine poem Rimini. It was objected that the story was not very moral; and he has now, in the smaller edition published by Moxon, altered the story so as to palliate this objection as much as possible, and, as he says, to bring it, in fact, nearer to the truth of the case. For my part, I know not what moral the critics would have, if wretchedness and death as the consequence of sin, be not a solemn moral. If the selfish old father, who deceives his daughter into a marriage by presenting to her the proxy as the proposed spouse, is punished by finding his daughter and this proxy prince, who went out from him with pomp and joy, soon come back to him in a hearse, and with all his ambitious projects thus dashed to the ground, be not held as a solemn warning. where shall such be found? However, the poet has shown his earnest desire to set himself right with the public, and the public has now the poem in its two shapes, and can accommodate its delicate self at its pleasure. I regret that the space allowed for this notice does not permit me to point out a number of those delightful passages which abound in his beautiful and graceful poems. The graphic as well as dramatic power of Rimini, the landscape and scene-painting of that poem, are only exceeded by the force with which the progress of passion and evil is delineated. The scene in the gardens and the pavilion, where the lovers are reading Lancelot du Lac, is not surpassed by anything of the kind in the language. The sculptured scenes on the walls of this pavilion are all pictures living in every line :— "The sacrifice By girls and shepherds brought, with reverend eyes, The opening of the poem, beginning "The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay," all life, elasticity, and sunshine;-and the melancholy ending “The days were then at close of autumn—still, A little rainy, and towards night-fall chill: There was a fitful moaning all abroad; And ever and anon over the road, The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees," &c. are passages of exquisite beauty, marking the change from joy to sorrow in one of the loveliest poems in the language. We have in it the genuine spirit of Chaucer, the rich nervous cadences of Dryden, with all the grace and life of modern English. But it is in vain here to attempt to speak of the poetic merits of Leigh Hunt. A host of fine compositions comes crowding on our consciousness. The Legend of Florence, a noble tragedy; the Palfrey; Hero and Leander; the Feast of the Poets; and the Violets; numbers of delightful translations from the Italian, a literature in which Leigh Hunt has always revelled; and, above all, Captain Sword and Captain Pen. We would recommend everybody, when the war spirit rises amongst us, to read that poem, and learn what horrors they are apt to rejoice over, and what the Christian spirit of this age demands of us. But we must praise the lyrics of the volume:-the pathos of the verses "To T.L. H., six years old, during a sickness," and the playful humour of those "To J. H., four years old," call on us for notice; and then the fine blank verse poems, Our Cottage, and Reflections of a Dead Body, equally solicit attention. If any one does not yet know what Leigh Hunt has done for the people and the age, let him get the pocket edition of his poems, and he will soon find himself growing in love with life, with his fellow-men, and with himself. The philosophy of Leigh Hunt is loving, cheerful, and confiding in the goodness that governs us all. And when we look back to what was the state of things when he began to write, and then look round and see what it is now, we must admit that he has a good foundation for so genial a faith. It remains only to take a glance or two at his English homes. To several of these we can trace him. Soon after his quitting Horsemonger-lane prison, he was living at Paddington, having a study looking over the fields towards Westbourne-green. In this he had a narrow escape one morning of being burnt, owing his escape to some "fair cousin" not named. There he was visited by Lord Byron and Wordsworth. At one time he was living at 8, York-buildings, Newroad, Marylebone. In the London Journal of January 7, 1835, Mr. Hunt gives a very charming account of a very happy Twelfth Night spent there, and in commemoration of it planted some young plane trees within the rails by the garden gate. Under these trees, but a year or two ago, he had the pleasure of seeing people sheltering from the rain; but they are now cut down. Here he first had the pleasure of seeing John Keats, and here he was visited by Foscolo. At other times he lived in Lisson-grove; at Hampstead, in the Vale of Health, where, as already observed, Keats wrote Sleep and Poetry; at Highgate, near Coleridge; and at Woodcote-green, near Ashstead-park, in Surrey, where he laid the scene, and I believe wrote the romance, of Sir Ralph Esher. Since his return to England he has lived chiefly in the suburbs of London, in what Milton called "garden houses;" for some years in Chelsea, near Thomas Carlyle; and now in Edwardes-square, Kensington, a square of small, neat houses, built by a Frenchman, it is said, in expectation of the conquest of England by Buonaparte, and with a desire to be ready settled, and with homes for his countrymen of more limited means against that event. The speculation failing with the mightier speculation of Napoleon, the poor Frenchman was ruined. Such is a hasty sketch of the many wanderings and sojourns of Leigh Hunt. May his age be rewarded for the services of his youth! In closing this article I would, also with this wish, express another; and that is, that he would some time publish that small but most beautiful manual of domestic devotion, called by him Christianism, and printed only for private circulation, some years ago. The object of this little work seems to be, to give to such as had not full faith in Christianity an idea of what is excellent in it, and by which they might be benefited and comforted, even though they could not attain full belief in its authenticity. The spirit and style of it are equally beautiful. The poet has recently sustained the loss of his wife, the companion of so many eventful years. ONE of the greatest pleasures that an author can have is to record the delight which he has derived from other authors; after a long career of intellectual enjoyment, to pay the due tribute of gratitude to those writers of an antecedent period who have laid the foundations of his taste, and stimulated him in that career which has made his happiness. This is always an act of love, an act of reverence and regard, which is full of its own peculiar pleasure. Of the writers, and especially the poets, who charmed our young and inexperienced spirits, how few are those whose works will bear the test of time; how few to whom we can turn at a mature age, and find them all that we ever believed them to be! Mr. Rogers is one of this rare class. Amongst the very earliest literary pleasures which I can remember, was that of reading, and that time after time, his Pleasures of Memory: and the reading of this poem is now, after nearly half a century, not only one of my pleasures of memory, but on reperusal is equally fresh, equally true to nature, and equally attractive by the soundness and the beauty of its sentiments. Mr. Rogers, I believe, never met with that species of Mohawk criticism, that scalping and scarifying literary assault and battery, which so many of his cotemporaries have had to undergo. There was a gentleness and a calm suavity about his writings, calculated to disarin the most eager assailant of merit. There was in them an absence of RR that militant and antagonistic spirit which provokes the like animus This was not the case, however, with Rogers's conversation. There he was often mercilessly caustic. Nothing could be so opposed in spirit as his pen and his tongue. Many examples of his cutting remarks have been made public. As a general characteristic we may mention this, which we know to be fact. At a dinner-party at his house, consisting chiefly of literary men, on one gentleman going away early, Rogers said, "Come, now let us feather honest A Whereupon he drew a description of him in such ludicrous colours. that all present simultaneously jumped up, exclaiming, "Let us all go together, and not allow ourselves to be dissected in detail." Yet, again, his conduct differed from his language. To merit in distress he was a frequent and generous friend. But in his poetry there was felt only the purity of taste, the deep love of beauty in art and nature, the vivid yet tender sympathy with humanity, which put every one dreadfully in the wrong who should attempt to strike down their possessor. Still more than all these causes, Samuel Rogers was a wealthy banker. He gave good dinners, or breakfasts, and what critic would think of quarrelling with such a man The very first line of criticism applied to the writings of Mr. Rogers was in the Monthly Review, on his Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems, published by Cadell in 1786, and was this, "In these pieces we perceive the hand of a master." Yet in another article, in Griffith's Monthly Review, we have come upon this sentence, “Mr. Rogers writes very pretty prose, but he should never think of meddling with verse." The writer of this daring critique had been overlooked in the invitations to breakfast. The master thus discovered in the first essay of his power, has never ceased since to be acknowledged. In 1792, or six years afterwards, he published the Pleasures of Memory, which was received with universal and delighted acclamation. It took hold, at once, of the English heart; and became, and remains, and is likely to remain, one of the classic beauties of our national poetry. From that day to so late a period as 1830, Mr. Rogers, at leisurely but tolerably regular intervals, went on adding to the riches of our hoards of taste and genius. In 1798, or in another six years, he published his Epistle with other Poems; in 1812, or fourteen years afterwards, The Voyage of Columbus; two years after that, Jacqueline, i. e. in 1814; five years later, or in 1819, Human Life; and finally, in 1830, or when he was sixty-seven years of age, his Italy. These works steadily extended his fame; and amid the truest enjoyment of that fame, Mr. Rogers lived a long, and honoured, and singularly, for a poet, fortunate life. His wealth and position in society, not less than his wealth and position in the world of mind, drew around him all the distinguished characters of his time; and his house, filled from top to bottom with evidences of his taste and of his means of indulging it, was the resort of most of those who have given its intellectual stamp to the age. Amid the great struggles and events of that period, the wars, the revolutions, and the social contests which have communicated their fiery elements to the spirit |