the most ardent for fame, which without anything to show to posterity for its reason, has handed down to us the memory of Æsop, Roscius, Baron and Le Couvreur, and which will transmit to our descendants the names of Garrick, of Oldfield, and of Siddons.

"It has been denied that actors sympathize with the feelings they represent, and among other critics Dr. Johnson is supposed to have denied it. The Doctor was accustomed to talk very loudly at the play upon divers subjects, even when his friend Garrick was electrifying the house with his most wonderful scenes, and the worst of it was that he usually sat in one of the stage-boxes: the actor remonstrated with him one night after the representation, and complained that the talking disturbed his feelings: 'Pshaw, David,' replied the critic, Punch has no feelings.' But the Doctor was fond of saying his good things as well as lesser geniuses, and to say a good thing is not always a true one or one that is intended to be true. To call his friend a puppet, to give so contemptuous an appellation to a man whose powers he was at other times happy to respect, and whose death he lamented as having eclipsed the gayety of nations,' must be considered as a familiar pleasantry rather than a betrayed opinion.

66

It appears to me that the countenance cannot express a single passion perfectly, unless the passion is first felt; it is easy to grin representations of joy, and to pull down the muscles of the countenance as an imitation of sorrow, but a keen observer of human nature and its effects will easily detect the cheat: there are nerves and muscles requisite to expression that will not answer the will on common occasions; but to represent a passion with truth, every nerve and muscle should be in its proper action, or the representation becomes weak and confused, melancholy is mistaken for grief, and pleasure for delight; it is from this feebleness of emotion so many dull actors endeavor to supply passion with vehemence of action and voice, as jugglers are talkative and bustling to beguile scrutiny.

"One of the first studies of an actor should be to divest himself of his audience, to be occupied not with the persons he is amusing, but with the persons_he is assisting in the representation. But of all simple requisites to the mimetic art, this public abstraction seems to be

the least attained. Our good performers are too fond of knowing they are good ones, and of acknowledging the admiration of the spectators by glances of important expression: our bad performers are vainer still, because ignorance is always vain and because, not being able to enter into the interest of the scene, they must look for interest elsewhere. These men in reality never speak of one another, but to the pit and to the boxes; they are thinking not what the person spoken to will reply, but what the audience think of their speeches; they never speak soliloquy, because soliloquies are addressed to one's self, and they always address their solitary meditations to the house: they adjust their neckcloths; they display their pocket-handkerchiefs and their attitudes; they cast sidelong glances, and say to themselves, ' there's a lady in the "stage-box contemplating my shape! The critics in the pit are astonished at my ease. My character sits well on me and so do my small-clothes.' But let us imagine the scene, in which this extravagance is performed to be a real room enclosed in your walls, for such a room the actor himself ought to imagine it. is he looking at all this time? He is casting side glances at a wainscot, or ogling a corner cupboard.

What then

"We certainly imagine that the fame of Garrick as an actor has been injurious to his reputation as a writer. All the world were capable of admiring him in the former character and therefore they talked more of it. People are indeed unwilling to believe that a man can excel in two things at a time: when Voltaire produced his first comedy, he carefully concealed the author's name because he had succeeded in tragedy. But no man had better opportunities of studying the manners of the lively world than Garrick, and no man entered it with a mind · more eager of observation: it was the business of his life to study mankind, and his universal powers of imitation prove that he succeeded. It cannot be denied that an universal mimic, a man who exhibited the features of human life in all their vivacity and variety of expression, must have well understood the human mind; a great actor does not copy faces like a portrait painter; he makes a countenance for the mind, and not, like an artist studies to make a mind for the countenance. It was said of Garrick by Johnson, who was not eager to praise

and the humble flowers that adorn the field and wayside in their meek beauty, have a fragrance and loveliness before unnoticed. If you sit with him at home, he will discourse on some favorite author, "one of great nature's stereotypes," and point out his beauties with a fond appreciation, "with some sweet relish was forgot before," with a wish to make all the world as wealthy as he is in the admiration and comfort they afford. He is alive to the poetry and beauty of human nature, and what lies about us in our daily paths, clear and inspiring to him, but hidden from many eyes by gross films, the product of worldly habits and customs. He is forcible and direct both in his poetry and prose. Cowley says that for a man to write well, it is necessary for him to be in a good humor, and this is one of the secrets of Hunt's success. He makes us behold the good and beautiful in every

thing, tenderly takes note of our faults and failings, so that we become tolerant towards those of others. The friendship we have for Hunt is a sure proof of his kindliness, and the sincerity of his writings. He has suffered much, but he seems as full of hope and trustingness now as in the days of his youth. Nature and man still have undying, cordial sympathy. This is genuine religion. His verses are very fine, and worked up from the simplest materials: read Rimini, for instance, "With subtil pensil peinted was this storie."-CHAUCER.

The bits of scenery in it are beautifully described, with a truth that brings them as palpably before you as if you were looking at a picture of Waterloo's. I observe that in a late edition he has changed the opening of the poem, to free the landscapes from northern inconsistencies:

Hunt is an exquisite judge of poetry, and his criticisms on Keats' poems, at a time when

"The tender page with horny fists was

galled."-DRYDEN's Religio Laici. were stamped with fearlessness, judgment, and a thorough insight into their beauties and faults, which the world now

acknowledges.

As to his politics, I believe he never went farther than to insist on the inherent right of the people to choose any form of government that best pleased them. He certainly did not believe in the enormous faith of many made for one," nor in the bloody legacy of right divine. These heresies were sufficient for the Tory magazines, and

they opened their batteries upon him. They heaped up falsehoods mountain high. Governments built on the model of that of Paraguay, as described by Cacambo, in Voltaire's Candide, they heartily eulogized. "C'est une chose admirable que ce gouvernement. Le Royaume a déjà plus de trois cent lieues de diametre; il est divisé en trente provinces: los Padres y ont tout, et les peuples rien, c'est le chef d'œuvre de la raison et de la justice." Nor were they better pleased with his poems, criticisms and essays. They took out their rules and compasses, and measured, but found everything out of all plumb, quite irregular, not one of the angles at the four corners was a right one. There is a pleasant description of Leigh Hunt in the Pen and Ink Sketches. The author is describing the celebrated men he met at a breakfast party at Samuel Rogers'. Leigh Hunt was amongst the earliest arrivais. He was about the average height, and looked somewhat older than I should have supposed, but anxiety and adversity had done their work on his frame. Unlike Rogers, his life has been one of privation and endurance. His hair was parted on the very centre of his forehead, and carefully combed towards either side. Once it had been raven black, but now it was so thickly streaked with the frost-work of mental toil and time, that it appeared of iron gray. His eyes were dark and vivacious, and beamed with that kindly expression which one may be sure Leigh Hunt wears who reads his delight.

ful works. There was a fullness about the lower part of his face, which rather marred the general pleasant expression, but his mouth was indicative of much amiability of disposition, his cheeks were whiskerless, which gave somewhat of a boyish air to his appearance, and this was increased by his manner of wearing his collar, which was ample, and turned down à la Byron. There was a slight stoop of his shoulders, that bend which is almost always a characteristic of studious men, and his dress was ill fitted, and hung ungracefully about a spare and somewhat attenuated figure. So much for the author of Rimini, who, as soon as he had greeted the master of the house, strolled towards the book shelves."

As a specimen how Hunt makes the best of everything, and can even throw elegance on the cheerless walls of a prison, I copy the following from his autobiography :

"I papered the walls with a trellis of

roses; I had the ceiling colored with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds; and when my book-cases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a piano forte had made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side of the water. I took a pleasure when a stranger knocked at the door to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise, on issuing from the Borough and passing through the avenue of a jail, was dramatic. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room, except in a fairy tale. But I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a little yard outside the room, railed off from another belonging to the with green palings, adorned it with a trelneighboring ward. This yard I shut in lis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass plat. The earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple tree, from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my flowers, they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from Derbyshire-Mr. Moore-told me he had seen no such heart's-ease. I bought the Parnaso Italiano' while in prison, and used often to think of a passage in it while looking at this miniature piece of horticul

ture:

"Mio picciol orto

A me sei vigna, e campo, e selva, e prato.'
BALDI.

My little garden, To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and meadow, and wood.

Here I wrote and read in fine weather,

sometimes under an awning. In autumn my trellises were hung with scarlet runners, which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes in my armchair and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off. But my triumph was issuing forth of a morning. A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison; the latter was only for vegetables, but it contained a cherry tree, which My friends I saw twice in blossom. ✦✦✦ were allowed to be with me till ten o'clock at night, when the under-turnkey, a young man, with his lantern, and much ambitious gentility of deportment, came to see them out.

I believe we scattered an urbanity about the prison till then unknown. Even W. H., (Mr. Hazlitt,) who there first did me the pleasure of a visit, would stand interchanging amenities at the threshhold, which I had great difficulty in making him pass. I know not which kept his hat off with the greater pertinacity of deferencekings, or he to the amazing prisoner and I to the diffident cutter up of dukes and invalid, who issued out of a bower of roses. There came T. B., (my old friend and

school-fellow, Barnes,) who always reminds me of Fielding. It was he that introduced me to A. (Alsager), the kindest of neighbors, a man of business, who contrived to be a scholar and a musician. He loved his leisure, and yet would start up at a minute's notice to do the least of a prisoner's biddings. Other friends are dead since that time, and others gone. I have tears for the kindest of them, and the mistaken shall not be reproached, if I can help it. But what return can I make to the L's. (Lambs), who came to comfort one in all weathers, hail or sunshine, in daylight or in darkness, even in the dreadful frost and snow of the beginning of 1814? Great disappointment and exceeding viciousness may talk as they please of the badness of human nature; for my part, I

am on the verge of forty, and I have seen a good deal of the world, the dark side as well as the light, and I say that human nature is a very good and kindly thing, and capable of all sorts of excellence. Art thou not a refutation of all that can be said against it,

excellent Sir John Surnburne ?-another

friend whom I made in prison, and whose image, now before my imagination, fills my whole frame with emotion. I could kneel before him and bring his hand upon my head, like a son asking his father's blessing. It was during my imprisonment that another S. (Mr. Shelley), afterwards my friend of friends, now no more, made me a princely offer, which at that time I stood in no need of. I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that some other persons, not at all known to us, offered to raise money enough to pay the fine of £1,000."

Hunt's dedications display a frankness and cordiality which remind us of the noble old writers of hale and hearty Eng.

land. I select the one prefixed to Foliage, a volume of poetry and translations published in London in 1818: " To Sir John John: This book belongs to you, if you Edward Surnburne, Bart. My Dear Sir will accept it. You are not one of those who pay the strange compliment to heaven of depreciating this world, because you believe in another; you admire its beauties both in nature and art; you think that a knowledge of the finest voices it has uttered, ancient as well as modern, ought, even in gratitude, to be shared by the sex that has inspired so many of them. A rational piety and a manly patriotism does not hinder you from putting the Phidian Jupiter over your organ, or flowers at the end of your room; in short, you who visit the sick and the prisoner, for the sake of helping them without frightening, cannot look more tenderly after others than you are regarded by your own family; nor can any one of the manly and amiable friends that I have the happiness of possessing, more fitly receive a book, the object of which is to cultivate a love of nature out of doors, and of sociality within. Pray pardon me this public compliment, for my own sake, and for sincerity's. That you may long continue to be the centre of kind, happy looks, and an example to the once cheerful gentry of this war and money-injured land, is the constant wish of your obliged and affectionate servant, Leigh Hunt."

To conclude, I will copy two sonnets, and parts of two epistles, showing the graceful and kind-hearted intercourse that subsists between Hunt and his friends: