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reviled, and these it gives me sincere pleasure to record. few passages from the article are given at the end of this Introduction, page xxiii. Blackwood's Magazine, too, in later days, has said kindly words about Leigh Hunt, which deserve recognition and thanks. I am informed that Professor Wilson, long after the attacks in the early numbers of Blackwood, wrote to Leigh Hunt expressing his regret for the injustice that had been done to him, inviting him at the same time to write in the Magazine. This Mr. Hunt declined; but Wilson's apology gave him great satisfaction. This information comes from an old and valued friend of Leigh Hunt.

It is to be hoped that some enterprising publisher will try the experiment of issuing half-a-dozen handy and inexpensive volumes, devoted to a selection of the choicest pieces from the voluminous works of these two authors. No more delightful and improving reading about our great writers, from Chaucer and Spenser downwards, could be placed in the hands of students of English literature. Such a selection ought to include some of their best critical papers, with select passages from the works of the writers reviewed; as well as a goodly number of their essays on men and manners, many of which deserve to stand side by side with those of Addison, Steele, and Lamb. "The Round Table," "Table Talk," "Plain Speaker, "Spirit of the Age," "Characteristics," &c., by Hazlitt; and the "Indicator," "Companion," "Tatler," "London Journal," and other works by Leigh Hunt, would furnish at least a volume or two of essays and sketches, which, for originality, acuteness, epigrammatic brilliancy, grace, delicacy of treatment, and felicity of illustration, are not to be surpassed in the whole range of our literature.

I shall be amply rewarded for the pains bestowed on this compilation-truly a labour of love-should it be the means of stimulating even a very few readers to become well acquainted with the works of Hazlitt and Hunt. They will find "infinite riches" scattered throughout their volumes, and will be able to estimate at their just value the services rendered to literature and humanity by these two writers.

To William Carew Hazlitt, Esq., grandson of William Hazlitt, author of "The History of Venice," "A Hand-Book of Early English Literature," &c., and editor of the "Shakespeare Jest-Books," "Lovelace's Poems," &c., my best thanks are due for information kindly given me during the compilation of this volume.

With the following pages of brief tributes to the genius, character, and memory of WILLIAM HAZLITT and LEIGH HUNT I may not inappropriately conclude this Introduction.

ALEXANDER IRELAND.

ALDER BANK,

BOWDON, NEAR MANCHESter,

November 20th, 1867.

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

CHARLES LAMB.- "I should belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy which was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire, and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion."

LEIGH HUNT." He was one of the profoundest writers of the day, an admirable reasoner (no one got better or sooner at the heart of a question than he did), the best general critic, the greatest critic on art that ever appeared (his writings on that subject cast a light like a painted window), exquisite in his relish of poetry, an untarnished lover of liberty, and with all his humour and irritability (of which no man had more) a sincere

friend and a generous enemy. .. Posterity will do justice

to the man that wrote for truth and mankind."

BARRY CORNWALL (W. B. Procter).—" Without the imagination and extreme facility of Coleridge, he had almost as much subtlety, and far more steadfastness of mind.”

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LORD LYTTON." He had a keen sense of the Beautiful and the Subtle; and what is more, he was deeply imbued with sympathy for the humane. He ranks high amongst the social writers-his intuitive feeling was in favour of the multitude; yet had he nothing of the demagogue or litterateur; he did not pander to a single vulgar passion. the next age, he will stand among the foremost of the thinkers of the present; and late and tardy retribution will assuredly be his-a retribution which, long after the envy he provoked is dumb, and the errors he committed are forgotten-will invest with interest anything associated with his name-making it an honour even to have been his contemporary."

JUDGE TALFOurd.— "He was always best pleased when he could detect some talent which was unregarded by the world, and give, alike to the celebrated and the unknown, due honour. The excellence of his essays on characters and books differ not so much in degree as in kind from that of all others of their class. There is a weight and substance about them, which makes us feel that, amidst this nice and dexterous analysis, they are, in no small measure, creations. The quantity of thought which is accumulated upon his favourite subjects, the variety and richness of the illustrations, and the strong sense of beauty and pleasure which pervades and animates the composition, give them a place, if not above, yet apart from the writings of all other essayists."

HARRIET MARTINEAU.-"In Hazlitt, we lost the prince of critics; and after he was gone, there were many who could never look at a fiction, or see a tragedy, or ponder a point of morals, or take a survey of any public character, without a melancholy sense of loss in Hazlitt's absence and silence. There can scarcely be a stronger gratification of the critical faculties than in reading Hazlitt's essays. As an

essayist, he had rivals; as a critical essayist, he had none

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON.-"In critical disquisitions on the leading characters and works of the drama, he is not surpassed in the whole range of English literature."

"EDINBURGH REVIEW." "He possesses one noble quality at least for the office which he has chosen, in the intense admiration and love which he feels for the great authors on whose excellences he chiefly dwells. His relish for their beauties is so keen that while he describes them, the pleasures which they impart become almost palpable to the sense. He introduces us almost corporeally into the divine presence of the Great of old time. His intense admiration of intellectual beauty seems always to sharpen his critical faculties. He perceives it by a kind of intuitive fervour, how deeply soever it may be buried in rubbish ; and separates it in a moment from all that would encumber or deface it. . . In a word, he at once analyses and describes-so that our enjoyments of loveliness are not chilled, but brightened, by our acquaintance with their inward sources. The knowledge communicated in his lectures, breaks no sweet enchantment, nor chills one feeling of youthful joy. His criticisms, while they extend our insight into the causes of poetical excellence, teach us, at the same time, more keenly to enjoy, and more fondly to revere it."

"SCOTSMAN."-"His knowledge of the drama, the fine arts, works of fancy and fiction, and other departments of polite literature, taken severally, may not equal that of some other persons; but, taken altogether, is certainly unrivalled. His writings are full of spirit and vivacity, and there is, at the same time, an intensity in his conception which embodies ideas that are so volatile and fugitive as to escape the grasp of a slower but profounder intellect. He professes to throw aside the formality and prudery of authorship, and to give his best thoughts to the world with the freedom and frankness of old Montaigne, without submitting to assume the mask of current opinions or conventional morality.

"He has sensibility, imagination, great acuteness of intellect, and singular powers of expression. His beauties are procured by a great expenditure of thinking; and some of his single strokes or flashes reveal more to the reader's understanding than whole pages of an ordinary writer."

GEORGE GILFILLAN.-"Hazlitt, as a man, had errors of no little magnitude; but he was as sincere and honest a being as ever breathed. His works abound in gems, as sparkling as they are precious, and ever and anon a 'mountain of light' lifts up its shining head. Not only are they full of profound critical dicta, but of the sharpest observations upon life and manners, upon history, and the metaphysics of the human mind. Descriptions of nature, too, are there, cool, clear, and refreshing as summer leaves. And then how fine are his panegyrics on the old masters and the old poets! And ever and anon he floats away into long glorious passages, such as that on Wordsworth and that on Coleridge, in the Spirit of the Age' such as his description of the effects of the Reformation-such as his panegyric on poetry-his character of Sir Thomas Browne-and his picture of the Reign of Terror ! Few things in the language are greater than these. They resemble

'The long-resounding march and energy divine'

of the ancient lords of English prose-the Drydens, the Brownes, the Jeremy Taylors, and the Miltons.

"A subtle thinker, an eloquent writer, a lover of beauty and poetry, and man, and truth, one of the best of critics, and not the worst of men, expired in William Hazlitt.”

"LONDON MAGAZINE" (edited by John Scott)." His manner of commenting on the great writers is precisely that