ment in public and private has not been unknown in the case of other politicians besides Wilkes. He had no very exalted idea of the kind of treatment required to impress the members of the House itself. He told Boswell, when he was about to appear as counsel before a Committee of the Commons: 'Be as impudent as you can, as merry as you can, and say whatever comes uppermost. Jack Lee is the best heard of any counsel, and he is the most impudent dog, and always abusing us.' He was frank about a trick of self-advertisement, which most politicians, often ineffectually, strive to conceal. He once asked permission to deliver a speech as the House was about to adjourn. For 'I have sent a copy to the "Public Advertiser," and how ridiculous should I appear if it were published without being delivered!' In gentle humour he excelled. He once asked the Mayor of Aylesbury to be his guest in town, where he had never been. The worthy native declined, saying that he had heard London was full of nothing but scoundrels. 'I believe,' said Wilkes, 'there is some truth in what you say, Mr. Mayor, for I have reason to apprehend that there are a few suspected characters about.' On kings he was, with some ground, rather hard. He once declined to play whist because he never could distinguish a king from a knave,' and 'he loved the king so much that he hoped never to see another.'

In his correspondence with 'Junius' (Sept. 12th, 1771) he thus speaks of the King: 'Lord Chatham said to me ten years ago . (George) is the falsest hypocrite in Europe! I must hate the man as much as even Junius can, for through this whole reign almost it has been .. versus Wilkes. This conduct will probably make it Wilkes versus -- The whole of this correspondence is most entertaining, and on one occasion he ventured to ask the great Unknown, 'Does Junius wish for any dinner or ball tickets for the Lord Mayor's day for himself and friends, or a favourite, or Junia? How happy I should be to see my Portia here dance a graceful minuet with Junius Brutus! But Junius is inexorable, and I submit.' To which Junius replied: 'My age and figure would do little credit to my partner. I acknowledge the relations between Cato and Portia, but in truth I see no connection between Junius and a minuet.' The appearance of the black knight at the revel in Uhland's ballad strikes us as the only adequate parallel to the vision of Junius at a City ball.

In his old age Wilkes bought a little country house in the Isle of Wight, where he kept a well-stocked fish-pond, because everything was to be had at the sea-side but fish,' and amused

himself with writing to his daughter and reading the Classics. He still indulged in a private printing press, though with more decorous results than of old. He sent Lord Mansfield a copy of 'Theophrastus' thus issued, and received the following reply, the delightful irony of which he no doubt fully appreciated: 'Lord Mansfield returns many thanks to Mr. Wilkes for his "Theophrastus," and congratulates him upon his elegant amusement. "Theophrastus" drew so admirably from nature that his characters live through all times and in every country.'

He had the courage which does not always accompany a sarcastic tongue, for he fought two duels, and was nearly killed in one of them, and when challenged on a third occasion he behaved himself, on the authority of Croker, who was certainly no admirer of his, 'like a man of temper and honour.' His most serious encounter was with Mr. Martin, and Wilkes was only saved by two buttons diverting the bullet. One of his admirers procured these precious relics and put them in a case with the following inscription: 'These two simple, yet invaluable, buttons, under Providence, preserved the life of my beloved and honest friend, John Wilkes, in a duel fought with Mr. Martin on the 16th November, 1763, when true courage and humanity distinguished him in a manner scarcely known in former ages. His invincible bravery, as well in the field as in the glorious assertion of the liberty of the subject, will deliver him down, an unparalleled example of public virtue, to all future generations.' Wilkes would probably have said to this, as the Duke of Wellington to the obsequious gentleman who escorted him across Piccadilly, 'Don't be a d--d fool, sir!' But the extravagant denunciation of Brougham and Russell is just as absurd. No man, though helped by his enemies, could have achieved what he did without courage, resolution, and profound sagacity, and he must have possessed much charm of character as well as manner, to have won such pious souls as Hannah More,1 Charles Butler, and the monks of the Chartreuse, and have converted into friends the hostile Mansfield and the still more prejudiced Johnson. He was free from one great vice of his age, for he was no gamester. Altogether he may be said to have been sufficiently punished for the excesses of which he was guilty, for they have obscured in the popular mind the great services he undoubtedly rendered to his countrymen.

W. B. DUFFIELD.

'Hannah More's Memoirs, Vol. 2, p. 109,

AURORA LEIGH.

AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LEIGH HUNT.

[By the courtesy of Colonel S. Leigh Hunt, we are enabled to print, from a draft or copy discovered amongst his grandfather's papers, the hitherto unpublished letter written by Leigh Hunt to Robert Browning on the appearance of Aurora Leigh,' and alluded to by Mrs. Browning in a letter to Mrs. Jameson, dated February 2, 1857, as a very pleasant letter from Leigh Hunt of twenty pages' (Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,' vol. ii. p. 253). The occasional obscurities of expression in Leigh Hunt's letter are probably to be referred to the inaccuracy of the copyist.-ED. CORNHILL.]

Hammersmith: December 31st [1856].

DEAR ROBERT BROWNING,-(For 'Browning' seems too familiar to be warranted by my amount of intercourse, and Mr.' sounds too formal for it (albeit its very formality has justly procured it acceptance with Mrs. Browning) therefore I hope that by addressing me as 'Leigh Hunt' in return, you will authorize the tertium quid to which I have recourse in my perplexity)—

I received the new edition of the Poems, and the new Poem itself,' and read the latter through instantly, almost at one sitting; but I had work waiting for me at the time, was obliged to return to the work, had letters come upon me besides, and so could not write to give thanks, and say what I wished about the Book, as quickly as I desired. And what am I to say now? I dare not begin to think of uttering a fifth part of what I would say: for you must know, that I can never write upon any subject, beyond the briefest and least absorbing, without speedily getting into a kind of fluster of interest and emotion, with heated cheeks and a tightening sense of the head; and in proportion to this interest, this effect increases, so that I am forced in general to write by driblets; and the worst of it is, I write even then a great deal too much-just as I fear I talk-and have to cut it all down to a size so inferior to the on break, that you would at once laugh and pity

1 Aurora Leigh, published November 11, 1856.

me if you saw the quantity of manuscript, out of which my book, or even my article, has to be extricated. It was always so with me, more or less; and now it is worse than ever. Age increases the written gabble. See it is upon me now! so I stop short.

New Year's Day, 1857.

God bless you, dear people; you and your son, I mean and such others as may be mixed up with your well-being; and may He keep to you the Happy New Year,' which more or less must surely have come to you all, whatever shadow may be in it for the loss of the admirable friend' who has secured it to you. These are the first words I have written this year and they must needs be a little solemn.

But here am I nearly at the close of my second page, and have not yet said my little brain- [word illegible] say on 'Aurora Leigh.' I say then, that it is a unique, wonderful and immortal poem; astonishing for its combination of masculine power with feminine tenderness; for its novelty, its facility, its incessant abundance of thought, and expression; its being an exponent of its age, and a prophetic teacher of it, its easy yet lofty triumph over every species of common place; and its noble and sweet avowal, after all, of a participation of error; its lovely willingness to be no loftier, or less earthly, than something on an equality with love. I cannot express myself th[o]roughly as I would; I must leave that to the poet, worthy of the poetess, who sits at her side; my own poetry, of the inner sort, being of very rare occurence (if it ever occur at all) and the rest of it never being moved to vindicate its pretensions to the title, except at foolish intervals by foolish critics, who have no poetry in them of any kind, and who undertake to judge of things out of the pale of their perceptions. Therefore you see, I beg to say, that there is modesty at the bottom of all this apparent claim to the right of being loud and eulogistic on great works, and that I offer it for no more than its worth,—with homage to you both.

Nevertheless, I must not forget to add, that the poem is a wonderful biographic conversational poem. Wordsworth has written a biographical poem, which I am ashamed to say I have not yet read; but between you and me, Robert Browning, growing bold again on the strength of my convictions, I dare affirm, that Wordsworth, veritable poet as he is, is barren and prosaic by the side of the

Mr. Kenyon, who died on December 3, 1856.

ever exuberant poetry of this book; and as to dialogue, out of the pale of the drama and that only of the finest kinds, I know of none like it, for the wit and satire of dialogues in Pope and Churchill are things of another and lower form, besides being nothing nigh so long; so that this poem is unique as a conversational poem, as well as being the production of the greatest poetess the world ever saw, with none but great poets to compare with her. How did she contrive it, the little black eyed playful thing pretending to be no more than other women and wives, yet having such a great big creation of things, all to herself?

Nor must I fail to thank her for so small a thing as a title,a great thing too, like a master's note or two of prelude on an instrument; Aurora Leigh,' it sounds to me like the blowing of the air of a great golden dawn upon a lily; strength

sweetness (fill up that gap for me please; for my cheeks are burning) Thursday evening, for the poor little word 'Leigh' is a gentle word too, and a soft;—just the half of the word 'lily' (lee—lee) and I thank her in the names of all who are called by it, for the honour it has received at her hands. The late Lord Leigh, a great lover of poetry after whose father I was christened, would have been charmed by it; and so, I believe will his son; though where she got the notion of its being particularly stately and aristocratic, I do not know; albeit Stoneleigh Abbey' has a fine sound and Stoneley (Staneleigh) the same word provincialized is an ancient great name, half made of it;-Ley, Lee, Lea, Legh, and Leigh being all forms, you know, of the same word, meaning, some say, a meadow; others, a common; others, an uncultivated plain; and some, I believe, a green by the water's side. As to me, having grown up in the name, and been used to be pitied as 'poor Leigh' for my juvenile and indeed grown up troubles too, besides being called by it on so many other occasions, both private and public, I could not help being almost personally startled now and then by the piteousness of the above designation, by the remonstrative Mister Leigh,' a 'man like Leigh,' 'Smith who talks Leigh's subjects' &c. Having no other pretensions however, wrong or right, to be a Leigh in the poem, never having thought that my fellow-creatures were to be rescued by half means, without the inner life,' much less having- But to say no more about myself, thanks and thanks again for the whole book, and for the new poems in the other books, just [word illegible] of the [illegible] in the Portuguese sonnets, the appatriation of which