with the tender treble of the _Countess_ in _Figaro_, or _Polly_ in _Beggars’ Opera_. This waiving of the potential, this preference for the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character,--save when duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it; and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the error of his persecutor and gaily confessing to a community of mistake. While he was yet at school, Hunt was pronounced by one of his schoolfellows a “fool for refining”--that is, one who was a fool in his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety to be precise. A boy all his life, this leading foible of his boyhood attended him throughout. He has been likened to Hamlet,--only it was a Hamlet who was not a prince, but a hard-working man. The defect was increased in Leigh Hunt, as it evidently was in the prince, by a certain imperfection in understanding, appreciating, or thoroughly mastering the material, tangible, physical part of nature. This, again, is inconsistent with his own account of himself, but it will be confirmed by a close critical scrutiny of his writings. Over-sensitive, he was exquisitely conscious of such physical perceptions as he had. He was passionately fond of music, which he took to as we have seen. He was keenly impressed by painting and by colours,--which he defined with uncertainty, unless they were, what he liked them to be, very intense. He revelled in the aspect of the country,--but needed literary, poetic, or personal association, or habit, to help the appreciation of the landscape. His animation, his striking appearance, his manly voice, its sweetness and flexibility, the exhaustless fancy to which it gave utterance, his almost breathlessly tender manner in saying tender things, his eyes deep, bright, and genial, with a dash of cunning, his delicate yet emphatic homage,--all made him a “dangerous” man among women;--and he shrank back from the danger, the quickest to take alarm; confessing that “to err is human,” as if he _had_ erred in any but the most theoretical or imaginative sense! Remind him of his practical virtue, and, to disprove your too favourable construction, he would give you a sermon on the sins of the fancy, hallowed by quotations from the Bible--of which he was as much master as any clergyman--and illustrated by endless quotations from the poets in all languages, with innumerable biographical anecdotes of the said poets, to prove the fearful peril of the first step; and _also_ to prove that, though men, they were not bad men;--that it is not for us to cast the first stone, and that, probably, if they had been different, their poetry would have suffered, to the grievous loss of the library and mankind.