International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science — Volume 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850Various
Science
International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science — Volume 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850
Various
Art -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
One of the most delightful books of the season will be _The
Autobiography of LEIGH HUNT_, which is being reprinted by Harper &
Brothers, and will very soon be given to the American public in
an edition of suitable elegance. The last great race of poets and
literary men, observes a writer in the London _Standard_, is now
rapidly vanishing from the scene: of the splendid constellation, in
the midst of which Campbell, Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley,
Southey, Crabbe, and Byron, were conspicuous, how few remain! Moore
(rapidly declining), Rogers (upward of eighty), Professor Wilson,
Montgomery, and Leigh Hunt, are nearly all. It is fitting that we
prize these few, as the remnants of a magnificent group, which cannot
be expected very soon to be repeated.
Leigh Hunt has, for nearly half a century, occupied a prominent place
in the public eye, as a politician of a peculiarly bold and decided
stamp, when boldness was necessary for the utterance of the truth;
and as a poet and prose-writer of a singularly-genial and amiable
character. As the chief founder and critic of the _Examiner_, he would
doubtless occupy a high place in literary history, but as the author
of "Rimini" he is entitled to a more enduring and enviable fame. This
will always stand at the head of his works: but his "Indicator," his
"London Journal," his "Jar of Honey," and others, abound with the
illustrations of a most imaginative and cordial spirit.
We are glad to possess a good autobiography of Leigh Hunt. It is the
first we have from a long list of celebrated men; and no one could
give us such correct, discerning, and delightful insights into their
usual life and true characters. Hazlitt, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Byron,
and a crowd of others become familiar to us in these pages. It was in
the _Examiner_ that the first compositions of Shelley and Keats were
introduced to the British public; and the friendship which Mr. Hunt
maintained with those poets, till their deaths, casts a sunshine over
that portion of his life, which is peculiarly charming.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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