A Day by the Fire, and Other Papers Hitherto Uncollected

By LEIGH HUNT. Boston : Roberts Brothers.

IF any lover of Leigh Hunt’s were called upon to tell exactly why he liked that author, we think he would find it a hard matter, though he would never therefore doubt the fact of his liking, but would probably be all the more convinced of it because of the elusive nature of his reasons. You cannot say of Leigh Hunt that he is a great poet, or a fine wit, or an exquisite humorist, or, in fact, any of those compact and sententious things in which you are fond of expressing the quality of your favorite authors. You are aware that much of his poetry lies dangerously near the borders of prose ; that his wit is often faint enough, and his humor pallid and thin ; yet you know of at least one poem of his that is enchanting, and you recall some of his essays that are perfectly charming in spirit. He was an eminently graceful observer of literature and life, and his heart was so kind that he loved men almost as well as letters. He wrote about both in a facile and contented way, and as if he did not think that any book or soul would quite come to be damned, though he must have known that in strict justice a good many deserved something like it. Yet he was very far from a sentimentalist, and he despised meanness of any kind heartily, and suffered, and was always ready to suffer, for what he believed the right in politics or literature. We all know how he spent two years in prison for saying that the Prince of Wales was an Adonis of fifty, and how he was a friend of Keats when there was nothing more contemptible than friendship with “ Keats and Kangaroo-land,” as Lord Byron, who had a delicate, light wit of his own, called the new poetic school. Hunt had a truly generous and manly spirit. As a critic he belongs to what you may call the Charles Lamb school, and is apt to pick a grain of wheat out of the bushels of chaff in an old poet, and to give you the idea that the rest is like it; he has Lamb’s keen relish for titbits, and he helped on the bad fashion of judging work in parts rather than the whole. But his taste was more catholic than Lamb’s, and his reading wider. We do not think of any essayist who affords the unlearned reader so much information about the whole body of poetical literature, in such a very graceful and pleasing way. Preferably he deals here with the lyrical and idyllic poets, but he has a great pleasure in the story-telling sort, though he will most likely make you think better of them than is just. His talent is so potent that he can almost tell you something about a subject of which he knows nothing, as, for instance, in this volume, where he speaks so entertainingly about a Welsh translation of Milton. “Here,” says he, quoting a passage of the Welsh, “ are some fine words to the eye.” He does not pretend to understand them, and he is never wittingly dishonest, and when he writes of poetical themes and properties rather than particular poets, he is doubtless entirely trustworthy. In “A Day by the Fire, and other Papers ” he has this advantage, and is often at his best in essays about the genii of the ancients, and of the poets, and of the East, about fairies, about tritons and mermaids, satyrs and nymphs, as they exist in poetry and superstition. These occupy him for half the volume, and the rest is made up of various desultory essays, which are each to be enjoyed. He is very desultory, as an essayist should be, and if the thread of his discourse grows a little thin, he splices it, true essayist fashion, with strands of gold from a poet, often taking all the poor fellow had; and he is apt at any time to help himself out with some quaint or dainty bit of prose. So he never fails to instruct and interest you ; and if you will yield to the placid humor in which he writes, he is delightful. In the first of these papers, “ A Day by the Fire,” he is in one of his most characteristic moods, full of subtile observation and comment, happy in his quotations and allusions, and, as ever, quite unaffected.

Those who like Leigh Hunt will be glad of the papers, which a very ardent lover of him has rescued from the uncertainty, if not oblivion, of old periodicals, identified as his, and here collected ; and if this volume should persuade others to make the essayist’s acquaintance, it will be in the interest of good taste and sweet and sound literature. Another affectionate and invaluable editorial labor is added to those which Americans have already performed for English authors; and to Mr. J. E. Babson, to whose taste and discrimination we are all indebted for it, we are glad to acknowledge the pleasure it has given us.