his own idiosyncrasy. In his various essays he has left a faithful and true portrait of himself, with all his out-of-the-way humour and opinions; and irresistibly attractive the portrait is. How delightful it is, after having experienced the glitter and glare of much of our modern literature, to converse with the tranquil and gentle Elia, with his calm retrospective glance, and his love of communing with invisible things! "He would," said Leigh Hunt, "beard a superstition and shudder at the odd phantasm while he did it. One would have imagined him cracking a joke in the teeth of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with the awful." Not many authors are held in more kindly remembrance than Lamb by those who have really learned to love his frolic and gentle spirit. "Lamb's memory," said Southey-and hundreds of readers will re-echo the words-" will retain its fragrance as long as the best spice that ever was expended upon the Pharaohs."

From the placid and sweet-tempered Elia we pass to the vindictive and irascible William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a writer of very remarkable but ill-regulated powers. The son of a dissenting minister, he was educated with a view to adopting his father's profession. When seventeen years of age, however, he determined to become a painter, and spent some years in artistic labour, till he finally turned aside to literature. His first publication was a tiny volume on the "Principles of Human Action." This work, which found few to admire it except its author, who regarded it with a parent's love, was followed by many pieces of literary journey-work — abridgments, translations, compilations, and the like. The first performance of his which attracted attention was his lectures at the Surrey Institution on the "English Poets" (1818), after which came his lectures on "English Comic Writers," on the "Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," and on the "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays "-volumes containing much sound and striking criticism, but often misleading as containing judgments based on imperfect acquaintance with the works of the writer criticised. Hazlitt, it must be owned,

William Hazlitt.

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was by no means sufficiently impressed with the truth of the great fact that before writing about an author it is desirable to read his works. For example, he did not begin to write his lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists till within six weeks of the time when they had to be delivered, and his judgments. on their qualities were based on his hasty study of their works within that very limited period. His other chief works are his "Table-Talk" (1821-22), a series of miscellaneous essays; his "Spirit of the Age" (1825), containing criticisms on contemporary authors; the "Plain Speaker" (1826), another collection of miscellaneous essays, and his "Life of Napoleon" (1828-30), which is his most ambitious performance. It is a characteristic and not altogether useless production, in which he takes the side of the Emperor as strongly as a French writer could have done, and has nothing but contempt and hatred for his opponents. It did not sell, and poor Hazlitt died in poverty after a struggling, restless, unhappy life. Most of his mischances were more or less due to himself; his disposition was such that it is impossible to imagine him happy and contented, however prosperous had been his fortunes.

It

Hazlitt had a genuine gift for style; he was no mere mechanical stringer together of phrases. His chief characteristics as a writer are well pointed out by Mr. Leslie Stephen. "Readers," he says, "who do not insist upon measuring all prose by the same standard will probably agree that if Hazlitt is not a great rhetorician, if he aims at no gorgeous effects of complex harmony, he has yet an eloquence of his own. is indeed an eloquence which does not imply quick sympathy with many modes of feeling, or an intellectual vision at once penetrating and comprehensive. It is the eloquence characteristic of a proud and sensitive nature, which expresses a very keen if narrow range of feeling, and implies a powerful grasp of one, if only one side of the truth. Hazlitt harps a good deal upon one string, but that string vibrates forcibly. His best passages are generally an accumulation of short, pithy sentences, shaped in strong feeling and coloured by picturesque associations, but repeating rather than corroborating.

each other. Each blow goes home, but falls on the same place. He varies the phrase more than the thought; and sometimes he becomes obscure, because he is so absorbed in his own feelings that he forgets the very existence of strangers who require explanation. Read through Hazlitt, and the monotony becomes a little tiresome; but dip into them at intervals, and you will often be astonished that so vigorous a writer has not left some more enduring monument of his remarkable powers." As a critic, Hazlitt's judgments, whether on contemporary or on former writers, must be accepted with reserve. He could always clothe his opinions in fitting words, but he was not always equally careful to see that his estimates were not marred by personal prejudice or by the desire of saying a striking thing, whether applicable to the subject in hand or not. His accounts of the eminent writers of his day, much abused though they were at the time of their publication, are perhaps the most interesting and valuable portions of his works. Often vindictive and splenetic, they are always graphic and incisive, and rarely fail to call our attention to traits in the character of those under notice which might otherwise have escaped us.

The essays of Leigh Hunt cannot be pronounced equal in value to those of Hazlitt and Lamb. But besides being an essayist, he was a poet of powers considerably superior to mediocrity. James Henry Leigh Hunt was born in 1784, the son of a lawyer, and, like Lamb, was educated at Christ's Hospital. His genius was precocious, and in 1802 his father published a collection of his verses under the title of “Juvenilia." In 1808 he became connected with his brother in conducting the Examiner, in which he resolved to speak out his mind upon men and measures without fear and without favour. This resolution he carried out so vigorously as to expose himself to several prosecutions for libel; for the Government of that day looked with a jealous eye on the press, and free discussion and ventilation of public grievances were frowned on as much as possible. In 1813 for a certainly rather trenchant but perfectly just comment on the Prince

Regent in the Examiner, he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years. Hunt's works were many and various. We need only enumerate a few. A poem, the "Story of Rimini," appeared in 1816; in 1819-21 he published the "Indicator," a series of essays on the plan of the Spectator, followed by one or two similar periodicals; in 1832, "Sir Ralph Esher," a fictitious biography dealing with the times of Charles II.; in 1839 a poem of considerable merit, "Captain Sword and Captain Pen;" and in 1850 his most interesting work, his "Autobiography." In 1847 he received a pension of £200 per annum from Government, which he lived to enjoy till 1859. The works above mentioned are only a small portion of Hunt's contributions to literature. He wrote lives of the chief Restoration dramatists, two volumes, "Imagination and Fancy" and "Wit and Humour," excellent companions for those beginning. the study of English literature, and many other works. 1828 he published a book, "Recollections of Lord Byron and his Contemporaries," which made a great noise at the time. It was the record of a brief and disappointing companionship with his Lordship in Italy, and was written in a strain far from pleasing to his Lordship's friends, to whom it gave great offence. There does not appear to have been anything in it but what was strictly true, but as it was written when Hunt was smarting under the feeling that he had been ill-used by the noble bard, its tone and its revelations of Byron's character were such that Hunt afterwards regretted its publication.

In

Hunt's personal appearance is graphically described in Carlyle's "Reminiscences:" "Dark complexion (a trace of the African, I believe), copious, clean, strong black hair, beautifully-shaped head, fine beaming serious hazel eyes; seriousness and intellect the main expression of the face (to our surprise at first); . . . fine clean elastic figure too he had, five feet ten or more." His manner was particularly winning and attractive; it is said that no one, however strongly opposed to his opinions, could become personally acquainted with him without liking him. His character was one very ill adapted to practical hard-working

England. He was the child of sentiment, careless about business matters to an extent that sorely tried the patience of his best friends, and taking no more thought than lilies about the pressing demands of active life. His careless and sanguine temperament led him to have no proper self-respect about pecuniary obligations; though earning by literature what ought to have decently supplied his wants, he was constantly in debt, and relied to a considerable extent upon the benefactions of the many friends whom his amiability of character brought him. No one can have the notions about money matters which Hunt had without incurring a good deal of contempt-good-humoured contempt it may be, but nevertheless contempt of a kind which a high-spirited man would rather die than expose himself to. The sneering way in which Hunt was regarded by some of the friends who aided him may be learnt from the remarks on him in Macaulay's diary and letters, and from the use Dickens made of various traits of his character in delineating Harold Skimpole in "Bleak House." Hunt's essays and other writings are pleasant and graceful. He had an unusually delicate and catholic literary taste, and considerable powers of goodhumoured sarcasm occasionally reminding us of Addison. His "Story of Rimini " has been called the finest narrative poem since Dryden; and though this is rather exaggerated praise, Hunt's poems are of such merit which ought to have saved them from the oblivion into which they have fallen of late years.

In "Bleak House" another character besides Harold Skimpole is copied from an eminent literary celebrity. Walter Savage Landor, whose works are regarded by a select public with an admiration which they are never likely to obtain from the world at large, sat for the portrait of Laurence Boythorn in that novel. Landor was born in 1775, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. Very early he gave evidence of his haughty, insubordinate spirit, and of his ungovernable temper ("the worst," he himself very justly said, "that ever man was cursed with "). He was obliged to quit both Rugby and Ox