Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

"Thou whom I love, but cannot fee,

My Lord, my God! look down on me! My low affections raise;

The fpirit of liberty impart,

Enlarge my foul, inflame my heart,
And, while I spread thy praise,
Shine on my path, in mercy shine,
Prosper my work, and make it thine.”

[ocr errors]

LEIGH HUNT.

FEW names fall more pleasantly on the ear, or linger more lovingly in the memory, than his who wrote The Story of Rimini." As effayist; as a pleasant goffipper on things in general; as a link between the present and the paft; as a generous, loving, and large-hearted man; as a poet, as a dramatist, as a novelist-but more especially as a friend, is his name dear to us all. For from the kindliness of his heart, from the happy converfational-like style of his narrative, he seems to all his readers as a friend fitting by their hearths, and converfing with them on the fubject in hand. You can imagine his bright, joyous eye looking into your face as he tells fome pleasant story, and you see the sparkle which lights it up as he narrates some generous or noble action; you hear his welcome voice as he lovingly repeats fome lines from one of his many favourite poets; and in fancy you clafp his warm, honeft hand while you thank him for his visit, and heartily defire him to repeat it on the earliest poffible opportunity. He may be pro

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed]

The author is

He is the kind

perly ftyled the most social of all our writers, not even excepting Mr. Dickens. never predominant over the man. friend, the fociable vifitor, the pleasant goffipper, the drawing-room ornament, the companion never obtrusive and never unwelcome. At the time of his

death, in his seventy-fifth year, his pages are as pleafant, his talk as interefting, his fenfibility as warm, his focial fympathies as great, and his love of man as large and broad-if not broader and larger-than in the warm and enthusiastic period of his poetic youth.

From his pleafant Autobiography we gather the following facts of Leigh Hunt's life. He was born at Southgate, in the year 1784.

His parents

had been driven from America at the Revolution on account of their loyalty. At the time of the poet's birth, his father, the Rev. J. Hunt, was tutor to Mr. Leigh, nephew of the Duke of Chandos. His mother was the daughter of Stephen Shewell, a merchant of Philadelphia, and the poet fpeaks in admiration of her character, and is one more witness to the influence of mothers on the future career of their fons. He was an early inquirer, and was in fome refpects a precocious child. At feven he was admitted into Chrift's Hofpital, of which inftitution he gives an admirable account, and is himself one more eminent

« ForrigeFortsæt »