Leigh Hunt has too many idiosyncrasies of genius, and has too much subtlety and refinement, for success as a popular writer. It is said, that a man who is but just in advance of his pupils, is the most effective teacher. It is the same with the author, who should not be too far beyond the mob, if he desires to sway their sympathies and opinions. The qualities of Leigh Hunt's mind are extremely rare, and seem strange and unintelligible to the mass of readers. There are many writers of these times, who have exhibited more power, both of thought and expression; but it would be difficult to name any one who has surpassed him in a delicate sense of the beautiful, and a general subtlety of apprehension. In a question of mere taste, or a description of natural scenery, or in characteristic details of men and manners, we can conceive nothing more delightful than the writings of Leigh Hunt but he has many superiors in the fierce struggles of political controversy; and we have arrived at a period, when the public mind demands a strong and even coarse excitement. Even in literature itself, there is a correspondent leaning to the wild and turgid. Addison and Goldsmith would attract but little attention in such times as these. The mild essays of the Spectator would seem flat and insipid, and what publisher would make a liberal offer for the copyright of a one volume novel in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield?

When Leigh Hunt distinguished himself so much by his political writings in the Examiner, it was rather by the moral courage of his tone, contrasted with the general character of the Legiti

were not responsive feelings in the bosoms of men in general, to whom would poetry be addressed? Poets would write only for Poets! But all men have human passions, and these are the poetry of life. The faculties, and emotions

of the Poet differ from those of his fellow-creatures, in degree but not in kind. His pains and his pleasures are only more intense. He pants for sympathy, and to relieve his impassioned spirit, he is compelled to " wreak himself on expression!"

macy-ridden Press of that day, than by any intrinsic force of style. In fact, there was something even effeminate and fantastic in his manner, though his genuine love of truth and freedom, and the candour and sincerity and disinterestedness of his character, were obvious to the meanest and most malignant reader; though these noble qualities did not protect him from bitter and cowardly hostilities. In fact, the moral beauty of his character was the sharpest of all thorns in the sides of his opponents, some of whom seemed to think themselves justified in attacking his good name with the most infamous falsehoods for the sake of nullifying its influence. Considering all that Leigh Hunt has suffered in person and reputation for the good old cause, and that he was for a long time in advance of the rest of his party, it cannot be denied that the Whigs have treated him with signal ingratitude. There is no man living who has done so much to prepare the way for their return to power, and yet he has been wholly neglected in the ostentatious distribution of loaves and fishes to the men who have distinguished themselves by their writings. Even Tory authors, in every way below him, have had the preference. It is not easy to understand this gross injustice, unless it be, that our Whig governors, in their contemptible timidity, are fearful of being thought to favor their own friends; and thus, to avoid the imputation, turn their benefactors out of doors and heap honors on their foes. No liberal-minded person would advocate such party distinctions in literature, as should lead to the neglect of real merit; but here is a case in which a man of true genius is left to starve, though he has laboured half a life to forward a cause, which the legislators who have the power to honor and reward those writers who have benefitted mankind, consider to be the cause of truth and justice, and the dearest in which humanity is concerned; while authors of far less literary merit, and who have taken the opposite side, have been handsomely pensioned.

Nothing but Leigh Hunt's disinterested and undestructible love of truth, and a naturally lively imagination, could have preserved him from despondency or despair in the midst of his great and manifold afflictions; and it is truly delightful to observe, how he continues to the last to turn to the sunny side of all things. He is just as full of hope and trustfulness as ever, and he looks round upon nature and upon man with the same cordial sympathy and admiration that thrilled his heart in youth. This is true religion -true virtue-true wisdom.

Leigh Hunt seems to be quite aware, that his character as a politician is not precisely suited to the tone and temper of the times. He is far too mild and scrupulous and candid, and deals too much in generalities. He is too little of a party man.

Leigh Hunt's personal appearance is extremely prepossessing. His figure is light and elegant, and he has an air of genteel negligence about him, that is not common among literary men. He has a quick and sparkling eye, but his mouth is the most remarkable feature of his face; it has a character of great sensibility, and a kind of voluptuous refinement. If there is any thing objectionable in Hunt's personal manners and conversation, it consists in a slight tinge of foppery in both. Hazlitt is as opposite to him in these respects as possible. Hunt wears no neckcloth, but leaves his collar open a la Byron. His coxcombry, if such it be, has by no means a disagreeable effect; for his extreme politeness, his elegant manners and good humour would redeem a far greater foible.

NO. XIII.-KEAN.

This eminent actor seems to have suffered severely from his bodily infirmities during the last year or two of his life. His genius, however, had not lost all its original brightness, and in despite of a cloud of physical ills it shot forth occasional gleams, that were far more precious and delightful than the steadier

light of less gifted spirits. It will now scarcely admit of dispute that Kean, whatever might have been his personal failings, was the prince of modern tragedians. He had no rival near his throne. The John Kemble school is no longer the standard of Dramatic excellence. The school of Kean is the school of Shakespeare, or of nature, for these are almost convertible terms. The spirit of our great Bard in his moods of impetuous passion or profound tenderness was but ill represented by the deliberate and studied precision of John Kemble. The praise of fine taste and scholarship cannot be denied him, but he was rather a great rhetorician than a great actor. He consulted his head, when

he should have trusted to his heart*.

The Dramatic revolution, of which Kean was the originator and the guide, is correspondent with that vast change in the state and tone of our literature, which has thrown many writers, once the idols of the public, into comparative obscurity or disrepute. The cautious elegance, the scholastic accuracy, the smart antithesis, the wit and terseness of the poets of the eighteenth century, are qualities of an inferior order in the estimation of the poets and critics of these times. There is a disposition to recur to the unaffected diction and the free and forcible nature of the Dramatic writers in the reign of Elizabeth, the true Augustan era of British literature. The poets of that period, if less correct than their successors, in certain points of style, were more correct in spirit. The bards of the present age, like the kings of our elder drama, are ambitious to cultivate in themselves

Mrs. Siddons was a person of a different stamp, and was certainly superior to the rest of her family, eminent and accomplished as they were.

"Her soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

Perhaps she may be thought by some to have belonged to the same school; but if she did, she was so indisputably at the head of it, that she was not fettered by its rules. She was indeed a Tragic Queen, and could dare in her own person to make such glorious excursions into the realms of nature, as often startled the less adventurous spirits by whom she was surrounded.

a noble consciousness of their own powers, and a generous confidence in nature.

Such an actor as Kean, a genius so untrammelled by ordinary rules, so ready to snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, and to follow his author into the profoundest depths of human passion, would have gratified even Shakespeare himself. The mighty magician of the Drama would have been proud of a representative at once so daring and so faithful.

This great tragedian's last performance was in the part of Othello. His first appearance on the London stage was in that of Shylock. He performed it on the first night in an almost empty theatre. The town was for a considerable time much divided upon his merit. His style was too great a change from what the public had been accustomed to regard as a model in the person of John Kemble, to suffer them to appreciate it entirely and at once. The friends of the old school were naturally alarmed at so bold an innovator, and there was a fierce conflict amongst the critics as to the relative merits of the old favorite and the new one.

I will not attempt a minute critical analysis of the peculiar qualities of Kean's splendid genius as an actor, because it would be utterly beyond my power to do it justice; for those who have witnessed the performances of that powerful tragedian, would find even the ablest description of him vague, faint, and unsatisfactory, when compared with their own vivid recollections; and to attempt to represent him to others, would be almost as idle as to describe visible objects to the blind.

NO. XIV.-WORDSWORTH.

This writer, it must be confessed, is a little too exclusive in his taste, and occasionally carries an excellent principle to an extreme almost as pernicious as the error to which it is opposed. He is so thoroughly disgusted with the vapid common-places of the