Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

From The Spectator. CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT.* THESE two volumes are easier to read than to review; for though they are full of interesting matter, it is not of a kind which either requires criticism, or will bear being epitomized. More than that, "The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt" has already given to the world the chief facts of the poet's life, and afforded an opportunity to a younger generation of writers for recording their views of his career. These letters, however, are valuable for the additional evidence which they supply, that the current estimate of Leigh Hunt's character is on the whole a just one; and it is in this capacity that they admit, we think, of being made most interesting to our readers.

There is one sensation, of which we are uninterruptedly conscious, as we read this correspondence, and that is, that we are in the company of a weak man. Both in his gayety and his grief, his business and his pleasure, there is in all he writes a want of fulness of tone-a something neither exactly feminine, nor exactly frivolous, but thin and volatile. It shows with what awe the then comparatively unknown power of the press was inspiring our Government, that Leigh Hunt's papers in the Examiner should ever have consigned him to a prison. They are words without thought, and would now-adays take rank with the rhetorical rhapsodies of the nation. But they had the advantage of being truth, which lent them a power not their own.

It is only natural, though of course it is not inevitable, that a weak man should often show signs of that temper which is described as "pettishness;" and of such a temper there are numerous indications in these volumes. A good specimen to take will be Leigh Hunt's correspondence with the editor of the Edinburgh Review, at that time (1841) a Mr. Napier, who had warned Hunt against "colloquialisms" in his articles; for this particular instance will enable us to introduce at the same time a specimen of the rare good sense and sound practical judgment of the late Lord Macaulay. Hunt had already written one or two articles for the Edinburgh Review, in regard to one of which Napier had expressed himself in a very hand

He now

some and complimentary manner. proposed to write another, provided he could find "some chatty subject," and it was the answer to this proposal which drew down his wrath upon the editor. After referring to another article upon the subject of Petrarch, which Hunt had in contemplation, Napier went on to say that he should like an intermediate short article very much, but that Hunt's use of the word "chatty" had rather alarmed him. He had, he said, already been much surprised by the prevalence of colloquial, not to say vulgar, expressions in the style of so accomplished a scholar, who had written, too, such exquisite verses; and his surprise had sometimes carried him so far as to make him fear for the durability of their connection. Then, after some polite assurances of his confidence that such errors could arise only from haste, he adds that if Hunt will send him an article for the next number" in an amusing but gentlemanlike style," he will be delighted to receive it.

Now we think this language was inconsiderate. For a man doesn't like to be told that a valuable engagement is in peril, because he has used the word "bit" twelve times in an article; or to have it hinted, however indirectly, that anything he has ever done is not gentleman-like. But a man of sense, dignity, and self-respect would probably have taken no notice of it, and have explained it away to himself as Lord Macaulay afterwards explained it. But Hunt wrote to Macaulay what we can only describe as a feeble and lachrymose letter begging for his advice and assistance under this insult to his feelings. Macaulay wrote back an answer which is a model of propriety and wisdom. "Napier," said he, "had not intended by the word gentleman-like to reflect on Hunt's character or manners. His taste in composition was not so catholic as some men's,—

and, no doubt, it has a very colloquial char"He thinks your style too colloquial; acter. I wish it to retain that character, which to me is exceedingly pleasant. But I think that the danger against which you have to guard is excess in that direction. Napier is the very man to be startled by the smallest excess in that direction. Therefore I am not surprised that, when you proposed to send him a chatty article, he took fright, and recommended dignity and severity of Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. Edited by his style, and care to avoid what he calls vulEldest Son. In two volumes. Smith and Elder.gar expressions, such as bit. The question

is purely one of taste. It has nothing to do |found him with an averted face fixed fondly with the morals or the honor. "As to the tone of Napier's criticism, you himself. Literally, there is not one allusion on the past, of which the central figure was must remember that his position with regard to any one of these three events throughout to the Review, and the habits of his life, are such that he cannot be expected to pick his the whole of his correspondence. We must, words very nicely. He has superintended however, in justice, allow that there are two more than one great literary undertaking, circumstances which palliate this strange inthe Encyclopædia Britannica, for example. difference. One is, that his struggle for a He has had to collect contributions from livelihood lasted to his dying day, and abhundreds of men of letters, and has been sorbed all the mental energies which answerable to the publishers and to the pub- sickness had left him. The other is, that age and lic for the whole. Of course he has been the revival of the old warlike spirit both in under the necessity of very frequently correcting, disapproving, and positively reject- England and Europe must naturally have ing articles; and is now as little disturbed been distasteful to the veteran opponent of about such things as Sir Benjamin Brodie Toryism, with which it is commonly identiabout performing a surgical operation. To fied. His laurels had been earned in supmy own personal knowledge he has positively port of widely different ideas; and he states refused to accept papers even from so great as much, in fact, in a letter to his friend, Mr. a man as Lord Brougham. He only a few months ago received an article on foreign Hunter (1857), where he says it is not the politics from an eminent diplomatist. The business of a poet "to halloo on these brustyle was not to his taste, and he altered it talities." to an extent which greatly irritated the author. Mr. Carlyle formerly wrote for the Review,-a man of talents, though, in my opinion, absurdly overpraised by some of his admirers. I believe, though I do not know,

that he ceased to write because the oddities

But, above all, through these letters is discernible that sensuous temperament which has often been imputed to Leigh Hunt, and for which, in our opinion, he has been blamed too severely. There is no great of his diction and his new words compounded harm, after all, in a man being fond of flowà la Teutonique drew such strong remon- ers, fruit, and young spring greens, unless strances from Napier. I could mention other he neglects higher things in order to attain instances, but these are sufficient to show them. But Leigh Hunt was very fond of you what I mean. He is really a good, them; and his fondness was something, we friendly, and honorable man. for your assistance, but he thinks your style called a love of nature. He wishes fancy, quite different from what is commonly too colloquial. He conceives that, as the "At present," says editor of the Review, he ought to tell you he, in a letter to Shelley, in 1818 :what he thinks. And, having during many years been in the habit of speaking his whole mind on such matters almost weekly to all sorts of people, he expresses himself with more plainness than delicacy."

This sensible advice had the desired effect, and Hunt proceeded with his article, though what was the subject which he eventually selected as a "chatty one," we are not in

formed.

Akin to pettishness, is egotism: that kind of egotism, at least, which is compounded of vanity and susceptibility. And we find a good deal of this, too, in Leigh Hunt's correspondence. In the last dozen years of his life this failing had increased. "The Story of Rimini," the "Legend of Florence," and the Old Examiners, are forever on his mind and on his pen. The great events which were passing in Europe, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Italian Revolution,

[ocr errors]

I have made myself a nook to write in of a morning in the corner of the room where Raphael stood as thus: I have taken his place under the print of Shakspeare, in a chair with a table before me, put his bust on door, and filled the outside of the window it, with a rose-tree at the side towards the with geraniums, myrtles, daisies, heartsease, and a vase full of gay flowers; so that, with the new spring green in the garden, my books on the right, the picture of Jacques and the Stag under Milton, and two plaster-cast vases, the Mercury on the piano, I have nothing which has just sent me, on each side of but sights of beauty, genius, and morality all about me."

"We have had a late spring here," he writes, to the same correspondent two years afterwards :

the finer for it. The blossoms will not be "But it is supposed the summer will be so blighted. The fields and gardens are full of that exquisite young green, crisp and

juicy, the quintesscence of rain and sunshine, which is a beauty I suppose you will concede us even from the Vale of Arno."

Many other passages might be quoted, which all go to confirm the impression made by these, mamely, that he loved nature and natural beauties not only poetically but voluptuously; and this kind of temperament, if not kept in check by loftier and sterner conceptions, is just the one to give way to physical self-indulgence, even though it go no further than habits of indolence and contemplation.

It is a significant feature in Leigh Hunt's career, that he never attained to any of the prizes of his profession. We mean even the inferior and ordinary prizes-the editorships of magazines and newspapers-which relieve a man at all events from the difficulties which Hunt experienced. Yet were it not for this circumstance, one of the most interesting, and in some respects most creditable aspects of his character and career would be wanting. We mean the aspect under which he comes before us at the age of threescore years and ten, still a working litterateur and journalist, as he had begun life at twentyfive. We find him in these letters still ap

plying for work, still projecting articles, and still patching up republications with all the ardor and freshness of one who had never looked for better things. Nor do we find in these letters any expressions of discontent with his own position in the abstract, or any of those complaints, which men of letters are too prone to make, that his merits were neglected by the world. He seems to have been fully satisfied to remain a literary man to the last, and to be quite happy if he could see his way before him for a month. He does once record with some degree of bitterness that an execution was put into his house for forty shillings; but then his chief cause of complaint seems to have been that the bailiff interrupted him at dinner. We don't say that this easy way of taking things testifies to the highest kind of philosophy. Yet there is something amiable in the life of uncomplaining toil which Hunt followed to the last, something admirable in the simple fidelity with which he clung to literature; and something very interesting to all literary men in the spectacle of a veteran of seventy-four going about the routine of his profession with all the freshness and hopefulness of youth.

[ocr errors]

A WATERLOO ANECDOTE. Sir H. Blane, | observing some signs of life in him, instead of professing to give "a correct version of the death acting as the savage, dastardly Lancer had done, of that fine soldier, General Ponsonby, at Water- gave him a drink of brandy out of his flask. As loo," gives an account which is in every particu- the day wore on, Ponsonby's sufferings became lar but one erroneous. He has indeed jumbled so intolerable that he implored the friendly foe together two persons of the same name (as Mr. to put his rifle to his head and despatch him, but Spencer Lyttleton has pointed out in the Times), the gallant fellow said, "No, cheer up, the day's and has attributed to Major-General the Hon. your own, we are in full retreat; farewell, I must Wm. Ponsonby what happened to the Hon. be off." We are afraid to say how many wounds Colonel Ponsonby, and to the Colonel what hap- Ponsonby had, we believe they were not under pened to the General. General Ponsonby did a dozen, and his survival was attributed to his die, Colonel Ponsonby survived Waterloo for remaining on the ground exposed to the cold many years. The facts are these. (for cold it was though midsummer) for nearly forty-eight hours, which kept down fever that would otherwise have supervened. He recovered to tell the story we have repeated, and few finer looking men could be seen than he was, after having been riddled and pierced with a dozen wounds. But mark what death was in store for a man who had survived what we have faintly described. Exitus ergo quis est? Heu gloria! The hero died of the merry-thought of a chicken. He was choked by a chicken bone at Marral Green on his road to Southampton, twenty-two years after his escape of all the horrors of the field of Waterloo.-Punch.

Colonel Ponsonby, of the 12th Dragoons, was stretched wounded on the ground, and a Polish Lancer seeing some life in him, said, using a filthy expression, "f, you are not yet dead," and deliberately ran his lance into the disabled man's body more than once. Some French riflemen then took possession of the ground where Ponsonby lay, and they made a heap of the bodies they found on the spot to serve as a sort of parapet, from behind which they fired kneeling. Ponsonby had the luck of being placed at the top of the pile, and the rifleman who was using his body both as shield and rest,

CHAPTER XIV.

WHEN Miss Hilary reached home, Elizabeth opened the door to her; the parlor was deserted.

Miss Leaf had gone to lie down, and Miss Selina was away to see the Lord Mayor's Show with Mr. Peter Ascott.

"With Mr. Peter Ascott!" Hilary was a little surprised; but, on second thoughts, she found it natural; Selina was glad of any amusement, to her, not only the narrowness but the dulness of their poverty was inexpressibly galling. "She will be back to dinner, I suppose ?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, briefly. Had Miss Hilary been less pre-occupied, she would have noticed something not quite right about the girl-something that at any other time would have aroused the direct question, "What is the matter, Elizabeth?" For Miss Hilary did not consider it beneath her dignity to observe that matters might occasionally go wrong with this solitary young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances of London lodgings, that many little things might be happening to worry and perplex her. If the mistress could not set them right, she could at least give the word of kindly sympathy, as precious to " a poor servant" as to the queen on her throne. This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below stairs immediately.

The girl was revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical question. To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not "told Miss Hilary everything." Two things had happened, and she could not make up her mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.

Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and which from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher sensitiveness than, alas! is common among her class, or, indeed, in any class. This, if an error, was Miss Hilary's doing it probably caused Elizabeth a few more miseries and vexations and painful shocks in the world than she would have had, had she imbibed only the ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her life, the Recording Angel would gravely smile.

The first trial had happened at breakfasttime. Ascott, descending earlier than his wont, had asked her, Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?

Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr. Leaf.

Ascott laughed. "So he is a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here. Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town."

66

'Very well, sir. Shall you start before dinner?" said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.

He seemed excessively tickled. "Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind-hush! here's Aunt Hilary."

And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed, the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance, which gave her much more perplexity.

During her young mistress' absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up-stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking. There, to her amazement, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing, in close converation, over the fire. They were so engrossed that they did not notice her, and she shut the door again immediately. But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!

Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to anything going to happen in the family.

Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be intending to marry,

that horrid little man? For, strange to say, this young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has not, or has lost forever,—the true, pure, womanly creed, that loving and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to marry him for money or anything else when you do not really love him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind. A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray nooks of the world; but, thank God! it does exist. Hilary had it, and she had taught it to Elizabeth.

and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the city of London," Miss Selina was, for her, quite meditative, and did not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it, nobody else would. So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's, under shelter of the dim firelight,

"Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation. I have just received an offer." "An offer!" repeated Miss Selina with a "I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of visible start. "Oh, I forgot: you went to this? I wonder what she would say to it?" see your friend, Miss Balquidder, this mornAnd now arose the perplexing ethical ing. Did you get anything out of her? question aforesaid, as to whether Elizabeth Has she any nephews and nieces wanting a ought to tell her.

It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrinesthe same for the kitchen as for the parlor, nay, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed-that a secret accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually confided; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend. "Miss Selina isn't my enemy," smiled Elizabeth; "but I'm not over fond of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex her if I can help it. Anyhow, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."

But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest heart felt a certain diminution of respect for Miss Selina. What could she see to like in that commonlooking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation, "Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman."

governess ?"

"She has no relations at all. But I will just tell you the story of my visit.”

"I hope it's interesting," said Ascott, who was lying on the sofa, half asleep—his general habit after dinner. He woke, however, during his Aunt Hilary's relation, and when she reached its climax, that the offer was for her to manage a stationer's shop, he burst out, heartily laughing,—

"Well, that is a rich idea. I'll come and buy of you. You'll look so pretty standing behind a counter."

But Selina said angrily, "You cannot even think of such a thing. It would be a disgrace to the family."

"No," said Hilary, clasping tightly her elder sister's hand-they two had already talked the matter over: "I cannot see any disgrace. If our family is so poor that the women must earn their living as well as the men, all we have to see is that it should be honestly earned. What do you say, Ascott?"

She looked earnestly at him; she wanted sorely to find out what he really thought.

But Ascott took it, as he did everything, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How horridly dark this room is!" He started up, and gave the fire a fierce But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, poke, which consumed in five minutes a

He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the city, and who came in to his dinner without the slightest reference to going" out of town."

« ZurückWeiter »