Fortunately there is an extremely favourable example of his criticism which fills a whole book to itself, and is written under something like a general scheme. This is the volume—modestly sub-titled “Selections,” but containing a very large proportion of comment and original matter— which he called _Imagination and Fancy_,[473] and intended to follow up with four others, though only one, _Wit and Humour_,[474] was ever written. The plan was begun late (1844); but as we have seen in almost every instance, a man’s critical work very rarely declines with years, unless he actually approaches dotage: and the book is, on the whole, not merely the most favourable but the most representatively favourable example of Leigh Hunt’s criticism. It opens by a set Essay on the question “What is Poetry?” from which, perhaps, any one who knew the author’s other work, but not this, might not expect very much, for Hunt had not an abstract or philosophical head. He acquits himself, however, remarkably well. His general definition that Poetry is “the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity,” is not bad; but these things are never very satisfactory. It will be seen that Hunt, like Coleridge, though with a less “Cimmerian” obscurity of verbiage, “dodges” the frank mention of “metre” or “verse”; but this is not because he is in any way inclined to compromise. On the contrary, he says[475] (taking, and perhaps designedly, the very opposite line to Wordsworth) that he “knows of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry.” But the strength of the “Essay,” as of the whole book, is in the abundant and felicitous illustration of the various points of this definition by commented selections from the poets themselves.