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    LITERARY BIOGRAPHY.*

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    put forth at the shprtesfc notice a deluge of the veriest truisms , and torment the reader with merciless self-repetitions . ¦ ; . . We do n 6 t demand bran-new moral truths ; they are not so easily found ; perhaps any man who could produce fiye ^ such really * would be the greatest man of the day : we can aim at little mpre than . to give fresh and unexpected illustrations , cite very ^ remarkable examples , throw the light very strongly ojvone faeelet-of a diamond truth ; show an unknown root , or a fresh ramification , make up complements that have been omitted by others , abbreviate the results of a wide induction into as few words .-as possible , and as wide ead

    strong , or call some authoritative witness against a . -spr fallacy . In default of an absolute and almost impossible originality , the above requirements are what a reader may fairly make of a man who comes forward as the propounded and propagator of moral truths ; and , as far as these requirements are concerned , we consider the present volume , in the main , a failure . "Up to a ; certain point of excellence , a writer who seeks eminence in this department , it department it can be called , should come , and the line must be held tightly . The author has great reading ; but this reading-appears to us not to have produced its simplest good effect , —that of avoiding

    ten more repetitions of what he must have met with ten , or nlty times , it may be , in tie several authors---and their name is legionwith whose works he seems to be familiar . The best effect of his varied reading is , that it has made him liberal , possibly even too liberal to men holding the most opposite opinions ; it has given him a very wide range of sympathy and of charity for all , even for those who have had very little charity themselves . . The quotations are numerous , and form an important part of the work ; they are from the Greek and Latin , and all the higher modern European languages : some are very good ; with reference to liiany of them , the following remarks of Sir Thomas Brown , in his ^ Vulgar Errors , ' * are applicable . "We urge authorities on points that need not , and introduce the testimony of ancient authors to confirm things evidently believed ; and whereto iio reasonable hearer but would attest to them .. . . which , although known and trivial

    vulgar , are frequently urged by many men ; and , though verities in our mouths , yet noted from Plato , Ovid ; and Cicero , they become reputed elegances . " We have not attempted to test all the quotations and references , bnt some are irrelevant . With their :.: ' context We happen to be familiar . That from Dante ' s * ' Purgatorio / ' for instance , page 69 , has no reference whatever to the matter which the , author is urging , nor is it even applicable , or in point , as a loose line . Again , the four lines from " Monti , " page 1 ^ 5 , previously used by Madame de Stciel in the " Cormrie ' are certainly very little to the point , and had the author knowii the poem which he cites , he might have found trivial

    four others there really to his purpose . To prove a proposition , viz ., " There is indeed a soul in nature , and that sOulis God , " he adduces three lines of a Sophoclean fragment , which merely state , with pure Greek simplicity , that there is one God who made heaven , earth , and sea . Such quotations are pedantry , if they are not worse , the result of calculation upon the ignorance of the reader . The truisms are very fatiguing . We detest garbled quotations from an author whom we are reviewing , and we will show this , as briefly , and at the same time as fairly , as we cap . The author ; Jf wordy , is seldom absolutely pompous , ; though he is so once or twice , when he has to make what appears to him to be an important enunciation . We will take then two of theses

    ( Page 177 . ) «* Were it possible then , it should be blazoned in characters of light , proclaimed as with ft thunder ' s roll , that our powers must be exercised and developed to be retained . " .. < ....., ( Vnge 228 . ) " Peal it then through furthest heaven , no one is good in vaiii . " W © have taken two- cases of magnificent announcement purposely , and leave it for the reader to judge whether the wool is worth , the cry . Such verities do not need repeating , even as premises or intermediate propositions , much less as conclusions . We should be very sorry to maintain what we have said at the expense of the reader ' s temper and patience by further quotations of the same description , which we might make by the hundred . If JDr . M'Cormack's " still voice" were not sometimes better than his thunder peals , we should never have , taken the trouble to review him so much at length . There is much and high meaning in the following : —

    " Manners , in troth , make ua free of the angelic kingdom , and . founded on goodness and love iinply the very courtesies of heaven . JTor if > ve shall but reflect , the essential happiness of this life and of the Jife to oorao muatneods include the commerce—itself celestial—of natures proyreeBively elevated with each other , and with God . " ( pp . 48 , 49 . ) " The atheism of which I would apeak is of a yet more disastrous stump —acknowledging God , but loving Hum not ; professing charity ) but evincing none ; admitting God's existence with as little feeling as it is denied by some : the atheism of the heart , in short , if not the atheism of tho understanding . " ( p . 43 . ) ¦ . . . ....

    " For all aolf-imposed limitation—and every new duty is a limitationwhich is a condition of n real exercise of the spiritual or higher lifo , is the reverse of a real limitation , reconciles us in so far with God . " ( p . 68 . ) "It id only what tho soul drinks in with eagerness that becomes thoroughly and perfectly its own . " ( p . 00 . ) Wo could heartily wish that such matter predominated in the book , and that there were loss verbiage . Extensive reading ought to givo an author mastery over language , not language mastery over him . The stylo is Bomowhat Germanic nnd Emersonian , but without tha strength and orig-innlity of Emerson- —when he chooses to write practically nnd not mystically . The original German clement in the English mind and atylo is moat vnluablo , the imported rnther sickening- nndjitdd . •? Silence is golden , " quotes Ciirlylo ; we believe so , from

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    LEIGH HUNT may be taken as the representative literary journalist of the first half of the nineteenth century . J ± e would not be able to take that position at any later date . Ihmgs have altered , and , as we hope , for the better , since .. The pecuniary status , certainly , has undergone a great change and improvement . Literature has become more of a profession . Tins fact alone ^ wouJd disqualify the editor of the " Examiner" and " Indicator for the situation , for he would no longer have the excuse for Ins personal Huntin his

    embarrassments that in his time really existed . Leigh , autobiography , attributes these to his own ineptitude for accounts ; this may have blinded him to the fact as it stood ; but that tact was , though he could not see it , that the world was then opposed to the journal-craftsman , and , he had to win his ^ bread against desperate Odds . Now , a maVket has been opened for him , and tlie juvenile adventurer of talent can find in it a ready resource * while Waiting for liis opportunity in the greater world , or may safely make in it an abiding ^ plaee with ] the fair chance of a permanent income . the

    Weare not of those , then , who regard pecuniary position or Leigh Hunt as a fault in the man , rather than as a misfortune trom which it was scarcely possible for an individual in his position to escape . He was one of an army of martyrs , whose sufferings were needed as the condition of the world ' improvement , and the establishment of a new order or profession—arid lie was remarkably well fitted for the post by his antecedents and his disposition . Ihe son of a liberal clergyman , with West Indian blood in his-veins , thrown upon the world to live by his wits , there was just the instinct and the necessity in his nature and circumstances to tall into the way of life which he had adopted , and to follow its chances and fortunes with as much and success as were likely toattend

    courage ^ the efforts of any similar aspirant . In some respects , he had _ many advantages . There was in him the creative mind of the poet , with much of the execntive power ; and an adroitness in pvpse composition which stood him in good stead in the production of literary and critical essays , that were designed rather to appeal to popular feelings , than to display either erudition or orthodoxy . As to the latter , the age was in a state of transition , and as that state is always a painful one , there is no reason to wonder that Leigh iiunt , witli his Unitarianism and Universnlistii , which he derived from lus _ father , though the latter was a clergyman of the Church of Eno-land . e-ot sometimes into trouble with the religious world .

    Nobody will now care what his theological opinions were ; but what he did for literature and civil liberty will live in the remembrance of mankind , in whatever manner the popular creed may be modified , whether the form of belief become more or loss laUtudmarian than it was , or is , either in his times or our . own , In one point Leigh Hunt had a groat ndvantnge . He was a wit ; an elegant wit , who had studied in the school of our dramatists , novelists , and essayists , and had caught their spirit and their mantle . He belonged , also , to a guild , a brotherhood ot wits-j-Hoolr

    Charles Lamb , Thomas Campbell , the two Smiths , 'lheodore , Thomas Moore , Coleridge ,,, Keats , Byron , Shelley . Of all these , Shelley comes onfc more magnificently than any other . Ho gave Leigh Hunt no less than fourteen hundred pounds to pay his dojjta with ; and , to complete tho jest , tho debtor waa not at Just relieved , but suffered the full penalty for a email outstanding liability . Aho world may laugh ; , but Shelby ' s magnanimity was none the Jess , whether its gwi belong either to the broad or narrow gunge . U » the railway , of life such a benefactor la seldom met with . After nil , Leigh Hunt was more a man of taste than of genius . Hia faults belong to the former character ; liia morita also . Ho

    * Tho Autobiography of Loi < , h Hunt . A Now JMHion , revised by the Author ; with further lfevislbn ,. and an Introduction by his Eldest Sow . 9 mitJ » Elder , and Oo , , i / /•// , Mwcmlayi tho HMarlan , Stafamaw , and JfoMMM * f ™* f $ nfJwi Life and £ Uar « n / Labour ^ , tplth . aomo Aoouuni < f lib JSci > 'lj / . «>«( Unknown . Writint / 8 . John Cunnden Wotton .

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    what it costs some people to keep it , and the precious privilege thereby secured to their non-hearers ; " and speech ^ silvern r but of all iinds defend us from German silver ; of the , we r athe prefer the worstBritish metal , for thereis less pretentiousness aboul it . At the same time , we can honour suc ^ writers a * Jean ^ Vzui , and we wish Dr . M'Cormack had not alluded to Richter s . far , fetched analogies , for it reminds us forcibly of a power \ vh 1 ch 7 he himself wants , apd which would have supplied him with a few more new metaphors and simileS . , In many of tho author ' s doctrines we do not concur , but we liave not allowed this disagreement to taint our ciiticism ; we should be proud to share that kindliness of spirit > yhich some readers m ^ y prefer tb terseness and novelty , but which , without them , generally makes a man rather loved than read . ; ' ¦ _ ¦ ¦ T . . He is an universalist ; intimates that a man may degrade lmnseli infinitely / but does not appear to describe the process or dehne the luixuxvcij , " ¦*?•' .. i'C , , „ .,. L oomnnv rtf the volume he ?

    perioa or sen-recovery , xuwmuo ^^ ? , — r" , ji 1 4 . 0 .-1 iQWC Senies " retribution , " but elsewhere says that » God s violated laws do most assuredly vindicate themselves , " which we fancy , comes to much the samellnng ; but We apologise if we have misunderstood his meaning . The author admires and counsels benevolence , ^ think that he willfind more extensive and practical exhlb ^ , lon 9 J ?* ' * in men of what he apparently considers the narrow creed of the ijnglish Church , as ordinarily received , than amongst German dreameis and speculators , as there are exponents of its ^ doctrines amongst om great divines and moralists , the study of whose works would decidedly improve his style .

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    F ^ b ' / IB ; 1860 J The header cmd Saturday Analyst * 16 ^

    Literary Biography.*

    LITERARY BIOGRAPHY *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 18, 1860, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2334/page/15/