Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/398

384 384 HUNT comedy, was acted several years afterwards ; and other plays are extant in MS. The pretty narrative poem of The Palfrey was published in 1842 ; and about this time he began to write for the Edinburgh Review. In 1844 he was further benefited by the generosity of Mrs Shelley and her son, the present baronet, who, on succeeding to the family estates, settled an annuity of 120 upon him; and in 1847 Lord John Russell procured him a civil list pen sion of 200. The fruits of the improved comfort and augmented leisure of these latter years were visible in the production of some charming volumes. Foremost among these are the companion books, Imagination and Fancy and Wit and Humour. In these Leigh Hunt shows himself as within a certain range the most refined, appreciative, and felicitous of critics. Homer and Milton may be upon the whole beyond his reach, though even here he is great in the detection of minor and unapprehended beauties; with Spenser and the old English dramatists he is perfectly at home, and his subtle and discriminating criticism upon them, as well as upon his own great contemporaries, is continually bringing to light beauties unsuspected by the reader, as they were probably undesigned by the writer. His companion volume on the pastoral poetry of Sicily, quaintly entitled A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, is almost equally delightful. The Town and Men, Women, and Books are partly made up from former material. The Old Court Suburb is an anecdotic sketch of Kensington, where he long resided before his final removal to Hammer smith. In 1850 he published his autobiography, a naive and accurate piece of self-portraiture, full of affectations, but on that very account free from the affectation of unreality. It is more chary of portraits of contemporaries than might have been expected, but contains very detailed accounts of some of the most interesting periods of the author s life, his education at Christ s Hospital, his imprison ment, and his residence in Italy. In 1855 his narrative poems, original and translated, were collected under the title of Stories in Verse, with an interesting preface. He died at Putney, on August 28, 1859. The character of Leigh Hunt is not easy to delineate, not from any difficulty of recognizing or harmonizing its leading features, but from that of depicting the less admir able traits in a manner consistent with the affection and respect to which it is entitled on the whole. His virtues were charming rather than imposing or brilliant; he had no vices, but very many foibles. His great misfortune was that these foibles were for the most part of an undig nified sort, and, though it may seem a paradox, that they were so harmless, and on so miniature a scale. Leigh Hunt s affectation, for example, is not comparable to Byron s, or his egotism to Wordsworth s, and therefore its very pettiness excites a sensation of the ludicrous which the colossal self-consciousness of his contemporaries does not produce. The very sincerity of his nature is detrimental to him ; the whole man seems to be revealed in everything he ever wrote, and hence the most beautiful productions of his pen appear in a manner tainted by his really very pardonable weaknesses. Some of these, such as his help lessness in money matters, and his facility in accepting the obligations which he would have delighted to confer, were unfortunately of a nature to involve him in painful and humiliating embarrassments, which seem to have been aggravated by the mismanagement of those around him. The notoriety of these things has deprived him of much of the honour due to him for his fortitude under the severest calamities, for his unremitting literary industry under the most discouraging circumstances, and for his uncompro mising independence as a journalist and an author. It was his misfortune to be involved in politics, for which he had little vocation, and which embroiled him with many with whom he would otherwise have been on good terms. &quot;Though I was a politician,&quot; he says himself, &quot; I had scarcely a political work in my library. Spensers and Arabian Tales filled up the shelves.&quot; He was in fact as thorough a man of letters as ever existed, and most of his failings were more or less incidental to that character. But it is not every consummate man of letters of whom it can be unhesitatingly affirmed that he was brave, just, and pious. Leigh Hunt s character as an author was the counterpart of his character as a man. In some respects his literary position is unique. Few men have effected so much by mere exquisiteness of taste in the absence of high creative power ; fewer still, so richly endowed with taste, have so frequently and conspicuously betrayed the want of it. As Wordsworth could never see where simplicity of poetic diction lapsed into mere prose, so Hunt was incapable of discovering where familiarity became flippancy. While Wordsworth, however, is at worst wearisome, Hunt is some times positively offensive to fastidious readers. This obser vation principally refers to his poetry, which, in spite of such vexatious flaws, nevertheless possesses a brightness, animation, artistic symmetry, and metrical harmony, which lift the author out of the rank of minor poets, particularly when the influence of his example upon his contemporaries is taken into account. He excelled especially in narrative poetry, of which, upon a small scale, there are probably no better examples in our language than &quot; Abou ben Adhem &quot; and &quot; Solomon s Ring.&quot; He possessed every qualification for a translator, and it is to be regretted that his per formances in that department are not more numerous and sustained. As an appreciative critic, whether literary or dramatic, he is hardly equalled ; his guidance is as safe as it is genial. The no less important vocation of a censor was uncongenial to his gentle nature, and was rarely essayed by him. The principal authorities for Leigh Hunt s life are his Autobio graphy, published in 1850, and reprinted since his death with ad ditions and corrections, and the two volumes of his Correspondence, published with a connecting thread of biography by his son in 1862. The references to him in the writings and biographies of his con temporaries are innumerable. A full bibliography of his works, with excellent remarks, has been published by Mr Alexander Ireland. (R. G.) HUNT, WILLIAM HENEY (1790-1864), water-colour painter, was &quot;born near Long Acre, London, March 28, 1790. Overcoming the usual parental objections, he was appren ticed about 1805 to John Varley, the landscape-painter, with whom he remained five or six years, exhibiting three oil pictures at the Royal Academy in 1 807. He was early connected with the society of painters in water-colour, of which body, then in a transition state, he was elected asso ciate in 1824, and full member in 1827. To its exhibi tions he was until the year of his death one of the most prolific contributors. Many years of Hunt s uneventful and industrious life were passed at Hastings. He died of apoplexy, February 10, 1864. Hunt was one of the creators of the English school of water-colour painting. His subjects, especially those of his later life, are extremely simple ; but, by the delicacy, humour, and fine power.of their treatment, they take rank second to works of the highest art only. Considered techni cally, his works exhibit all the resources of the water-colour painter s craft, from the purest transparent tinting to the boldest use of body-colour, rough paper, and scraping for texture. His sense of colour is perhaps as true as that of any English artist. &quot;He was,&quot; says Ruskin, &quot;take him for all in all, the finest painter of still life that ever existed.&quot; Several fine and characteristic examples of Hunt s work, as the Boy and Goat, Brown Study, and Plums, Primroses, and Birds Nests, are in the water-colour galleries at South Kensington.