are accustomed to associate with that century
almost exclusively, were yet living and
composing. Sheridan had several years of life and
authorship before him; Murphy, the friend and
biographer of Johnson, might have been among
the readers of Leigh Hunt's early productions;
Mrs. Piozzi, whose portrait had been painted by
Hogarth, was alert and vigorous; Porson was
astounding Europe with his learning and
rejoicing his boon companions with his wit in the
Cyder Cellars of Maiden-lane; and Burke,
Gibbon, Cowper, and Horace Walpole were but
newly dead. The prose writings of Leigh Hunt
in those days were in a great degree modelled
on a book which was then a favourite of his,
and for which, indeed, he retained a regard to
the end of his existence; that is to say, the
Connoisseur of Colman the Elder, and Bonnell
Thornton. It was a collection of periodical
essays, in the manner of Addison's and Steele's
Spectator and Tatler, and was distinguished by
a vein of pleasant humour and wit, though
devoid of the freshness, originality, and intellect of
its prototypes. Its influence over Leigh Hunt
was marked. He even caught up the pet
phrases of the Connoisseur period; talked of
"the town," "the critics," "the wits," "the
fops," &c.; and reproduced with unconscious
fidelity the tone of airy banter in which they
delighted. Lying before us at the present
moment is a small volume, entitled Critical Essays
on the Performers of the London Theatres,
including General Observations on the Practice
and Genius of the Stage. By the Author of
the Theatrical Criticisms in the Weekly Paper
called the News. The author in question is the
subject of this article; and it is curious to note
the difference presented by the style of the book
to that which distinguished the essayist throughout
the greater part of his life. Instead of the
easy, unambitious, conversational utterance of
later years, sometimes even straggling into an
apparent carelessness (though Leigh Hunt was
in fact far from careless in anything), we find a
style of conscious and laboured epigram, with
the somewhat ostentatious scholarliness, and
proneness to moralise and lecture, of a youth not
long free from the influences of his tutor. It is
not difficult, however, to see in any page you
may open upon, that the youth is one of no
small mark. The wit is often genuine, however
assumed the manner: as where, speaking of
John Kemble's eccentricities of pronunciation,
he says: "I could mispronounce much better
than he when I was a mere infant." This is
like some of the happy retorts of Johnson in
familiar conversation; but, a few lines further
down, we have Johnson in his balanced literary
style: "He (Kemble) does not present one the
idea of a man who grasps with the force of
genius, but of one who overcomes by the toil of
attention." The very title-page of the book
has a smack of the last century. It contains a
picture wherein Tragedy and Comedy—the one
with a goblet and dagger, the other with an
arrow—attitudinise before a partially draped
mirror, labelled "Yourself," and having more
the appearance of a round table on end, than a
looking-glass; and underneath is a motto from
Horace.

A similar mixture of conventional manner and
original observation is perceptible throughout
the early letters contained in these two volumes
of Correspondence. In the same month of the
same year (February, 1806), he writes some
love-verses containing such lines as,

   Hears the accustom'd sighs thy bosom swell,
   Pensive, not sad, for him who loves so well,

and some admirable remarks on the impropriety
of people assuming the duties of sponsors when
they either doubt the doctrines in which they
undertake to see the child reared, or do not
intend to give themselves any further trouble
about the matter. The independence of the
writer's mind, indeed, shows itself very early,
though there is no doubt that Leigh Hunt began
life with certain transmitted forms of thought
which he afterwards threw off. The observations
scattered about these letters are excellent and
very original, even when the correspondent was
a mere youth. In one, written in 1807, he
says: "Affection, like melancholy, magnifies
trifles: but the magnifying of the one is like
looking through a telescope at heavenly objects;
that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a
microscope." The sentence is worthy of the
writer's best days. Much of the ability for
humorous character-painting which was
afterwards strikingly exhibited in the Indicator,
is also to be traced in the early letters. In the
course of a visit to Nottingham, in the summer
of 1808, he made the acquaintance of a medical
man, who, knowing that his young visitor was
the editor of the Examiner, determined upon
"doing himself the honour of contributing his
atom towards the said editor's general
knowledge." Accordingly, he first galvanised the
editor, "who felt as if he had been shot through
the head;" then he showed him a lady's heart,
thereby rather staggering his belief "that that
interesting object could be the seat of love;"
and, finally, "he introduced the said editor to a
murderer!" The murderer existed in no more
formidable shape than that of a dried skeleton,
which was preserved in a cupboard in the
medical man's room. "However," writes Leigh
Hunt, "when the doctor galvanised me the
other night, he put out the candles in his room;
and there I sat in the dark, awfully enough, with
a man before me who was creating strange fire,
and a murderer standing behind me in a little
closet. I thought of the skeleton in that
facetious romance I read just before I came away,
who was seen sitting and chattering with a
monk, like two bricklayers over a pint of porter."
The mingling of humour and grim wildness in
this passage is fit for a German legend.

We find the happy boyishness of spirits
gradually clouded with graver thoughts as life
advanced. Leigh Hunt was only eight-and-twenty
when, in February, 1813, he and his elder
brother John were sent to prison for two years,
for the celebrated libel on the Prince Regent;