Characteristics of Leigh Hunt, AS EXHIBITED IN THAT TYPICAL LITERARY PERIODICAL, "LEIGH HUNT'S LONDON JOURNAL" (1834-35). With Illustrative Notes. BY LAUNCELOT CROSS. "I KEN THE BANKS WHERE AMARANTHS BLOW, LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. MDCCCLXXVIII, Coleridge. To ALEXANDER IRELAND, ESQ. DEAR IRELAND, It is altogether owing to your gentle importunity that my remarks on Leigh Hunt's London Journal have assumed their present form, and I could not but yield to the reasons you urge for bringing them before the public. You have identified yourself with the names of Lamb, Hazlitt, and Hunt, by your zealous search after all that has come from their pens, but more eminently by your trilogy regarding their productions, and contemporaneous opinions thereupon.* To you, therefore, above all others that I know, these humble pages may be most appropriately dedicated. If the reasons I have mentioned were insufficient to justify me, the heaven of your good feelings should suffer violence at my hands in right of the name of Friend-which hourly-desecrated word I use in all its fulness and with all reverence for its sacred import. Through you I have realised in literary matters the fulfilment of the words of Sir William Temple, which Hunt took as his motto for The Companion : "Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a Friend." 15th April, 1878. Yours faithfully, LAUNCELOT CROSS. *The following is the title of Mr. Ireland's book:-"List of the Writings of WILLIAM HAZLITT and LEIGH HUNT, chronologically arranged; with Notes, Descriptive, Critical, and Explanatory, and a Selection of Opinions, regarding their Genius and Characteristics, by distinguished contemporaries and friends, as well as by subsequent critics; preceded by a Review of, and Extracts from, Barry Cornwall's Memorials of Charles Lamb;' with a Few Words on William Hazlitt and his Writings, and a Chronological List of the Works of Charles Lamb. By ALEXANDER IRELAND [Manchester]. 1868. (Privately printed.)" |