It is almost a pity to discourage a man when he exhibits an inclination to think too favourably of persons whom he happens to have known; and therefore we ought not, perhaps, to object to Mr. Hunt's account of Shelley, Keats, or Lamb. Of this last, however, he seems to us to entertain by far too lofty an opinion. In a philosophical point of view, Aristotle forms Mr. Hunt's beau-ideal, because, intending to be most complimentary, he compares Lamb's head to his. Now what could possibly have suggested the comparison is more than we can conjecture. Our facetious countryman possessed, no doubt, remarkable abilities in his way; but that way did not at all resemble the Stagyrite's more than it did that of Lord Bacon. To compare Lamb to Aristotle is very much like comparing a smart corporal of a regiment to Hannibal. Such approximations are extremely injudicious. What Mr. Hunt could be thinking of, when he placed an intellectual pigmy like Lamb in juxta-position with this most extraordinary, save one, of extraordinary men, is totally past our comprehension. Among all the births of time, Socrates only takes precedence of Aristotle. It is injudicious to confound great and little men together; it is something very much worse to assist, as Lamb did, in carrying on a parallel between the characters of Christ and Voltaire, than which in this universe no two things could be more unlike. Mr. Hunt may not be willing to think so of his friend, but we fear Lamb was infected by that vulgar vanity which leads men to say startling things for the purpose of shocking those with whom they converse. What Mr. Hunt calls bearding a superstition, of which he was at the same time afraid, confirms us in this view of the matter. He wished to obtain the reputation of an esprit fort, though trembling_inwardly at his own audacity. This is a common weakness. Few men have the courage to respect their own convictions before those of other men, or to be true to their faith, whatever it may be, in the midst of a perverse generation. To lack the courage to despise the scoffer, is to be weak indeed.

In justification of our views, we lay before our readers one or two passages of Mr. Hunt's reminiscences of Charles Lamb::

'Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was a caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man what he meant by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and said the artist meant no offence. There never was a true portrait of Lamb. His features were strongly, yet delicately, cut; he had a fine eye as well as forehead; and no face carried in it greater marks of thought and feeling. It resembled that of Bacon, with less worldly vigour, and more sensibility.

'As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be, and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy, apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of anything as it was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong contrasts was the foundation of his humour, which was that of a wit at once melancholy and willing to be pleased. He would beard a superstition, and shudder at the old phantasm while he did it. One would have imagined him cracking a jest in the teeth of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself, out of sympathy to the awful. His humour and his knowledge both, were those of Hamlet, of Molière, of Carlin, who shook a city with laughter, and, in order to divert his melancholy, was recommended to go and hear himself. Yet he extracted a real pleasure out of his jokes, because good-heartedness retains that privilege when it fails in everything else. I should say he condescended to be a punster, if condescension had been a word befitting wisdom like his. Being told that somebody had lampooned him, he said, "Very well, I'll Lamb-pun him!" His puns were admirable, and often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater names; such a man, for instance, as Nicole, the Frenchman, who was a baby to him. He would have cracked a score of jokes at him, worth his whole book of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not have understood him, but Rochefoucault would, and Pascal too; and some of our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have been worthy of hearing Shakspere read one of his scenes to him, hot from the brain. Common-place found a great comforter in him, as long as it was good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "dumb-founded" a long tirade one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other quarter) that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ for the French."-Vol. ii. p. 217, et seq.

What Mr. Hunt says of Coleridge, seems to us truer and more agreeable. In Lamb's case, he was trying to make a great man out of a middling one; in Coleridge's, he had really an extraordinary personage to deal with, and he has despatched him without any very superfluous ceremony. Both these writers were inimical to progress, because of the innate weakness of the rational and impassioned part of their minds. They were imaginative, dreamy, easy fellows, contented or discontented, as the case might be, but pre-eminently destitute of energy, and

incapable of sympathizing with every day human nature. Mr. Hunt writes jocosely, when he talks of Coleridge having turned a political coward because he got fat. His fat may have denoted the sluggishness of his character, but the real reason of his ceasing to sympathize with the many was the preference he gave to his own ease before the good of mankind. He was too indolent and fond of comforts to be a martyr, and therefore became a renegade to the principles he once professed.

In nearly all men, save the greatest, time seems to quench the flame of enthusiasm, which leads them in youth to be, in their own particular way, tribunes of the people, fighting their battles against the powerful, and striving to give a practical development to Christianity. Mr. Hunt himself, though still entertaining liberal views, is no longer the political enthusiast he once was. Without acquiescing altogether in the perfection of things as they are, he has something to say in favour of innumerable abuses which he will not confess to be such. Once, it strikes us, he was able to contemplate the beauty and grandeur of democracy; but he has now adopted a milder set of notions, more analogous perhaps to his character, full of gentleness and suavity, but destitute of that robust sympathy which leads men to take up their portion with the multitude against courts, aristocracies, and gentilities. Coleridge, whose errors he gingerly points out, was in many respects an impostor-affecting to discover surpassing excellences in obsolete forms of civil and ecclesiastical polity. Sincere in such beliefs it is impossible he should have been, unless his understanding was far meaner than we have hitherto been accustomed to suppose. However, we are under an absolute necessity of admitting one of two things-either that he was grossly insincere, or that he was incapable of raising his mind to the level of political and moral truth. It is for his admirers to decide. As a specimen of what Mr. Hunt writes of him, we select the following passage:

'Coleridge was as little fitted for action as Lamb, but on a different account. His person was of a good height, but as sluggish and solid as the other's was light and fragile. It had, perhaps, suffered it to look old before its time, for want of exercise. His hair was white at fifty; and as he generally dressed in black, and had a very tranquil demeanour, his appearance was gentlemanly, and, for several years before his death, was reverend. Nevertheless, there was something invincibly young in the look of his face. It was round and freshcoloured, with agreeable features, and an open, indolent, good-natured mouth. This boy-like expression was very becoming in one who dreamed and speculated as he did when he was really a boy, and who passed his life, apart from the rest of the world, with a book and his flowers. His forehead was prodigious-a great piece of placid marble;

and his fine eyes, in which all the activity of his mind seemed to concentrate, moved under it with a sprightly ease, as if it was pastime to them to carry all that thought.

And it was pastime. Hazlitt said that Coleridge's genius appeared to him like a spirit-all head and wings, eternally floating about in etherealities. He gave me a different impression. I fancied him a good-natured wizard, very fond of earth, and conscious of reposing with weight enough in his easy chair, but able to conjure his etherealities about him in the twinkling of an eye. He could also change them by thousands, and dismiss them as easily when his dinner came. It was a mighty intellect put upon a sensual body; and the reason why he did little more with it than talk and dream was, that it is agreeable with such a body to do little else. I do not mean that Coleridge was a sensualist in an ill sense. He was capable of too many innocent pleasures to take any pleasure in the way that a man of the world would take it. The idlest things he did would have had a warrant ; but, if all the senses in their time did not find lodging in that human plenitude of his, never believe that they did in Thomson, or in Boccaccio.'-Ib. p. 222, et seq.

We now pass on to that portion of the work which contains an account of Mr. Hunt's visit to Italy, amusing in itself, but falling short in many respects of what we had expected from the writer. No doubt there are passages here and there graphically written and full of interest; but both mind and body would seem to have been in an unhealthy state during the whole four years of his sojourn, so that he was not in a condition properly to enjoy or to feel the inspiration of the country. Out of this department of the work we select a highly amusing passage on the fire-fly, in introducing which we may relate an anecdote connected with the same little insect. At a grand ball given at Calcutta, where the ladies had recourse to every agreeable device for outshining each other, one of the company, who happened to have more invention than diamonds, entered the room with a blaze of fireflies in her dress. She had captured a great number of them, and enclosed them in little gauze bags sprinkled all over her skirt, which yielded forth a brilliant light as she moved to and fro, exciting the admiration of the whole party :

'But there is one insect which is equally harmless and beautiful. It succeeds the noisy cicala of an evening, and is of so fairy-like a nature and lustre, that it would be almost worth coming into the South to look at it, if there were no other attraction-I allude to the fire-fly. Imagine thousands of flashing diamonds every night powdering the ground, the trees, and the air, especially in the darkest places, and in the cornfields. They give at once a delicacy and brilliancy to Italian darkness inconceivable. It is the glow-worm winged and flying in crowds. England, it is the female alone that can be said to give light; that of the male, who is the exclusive possessor of the wings, is hardly per

In

ceptible. "Worm" is a wrong word, the creature being a real insect. The Tuscan name is lucciola, little light. In Genoa, they call them caee-belle (chiare-belle), clear and pretty. When held in the hand the little creature is discovered to be a dark-coloured beetle, but without the hardness or sluggish look of the beetle tribe. The light is contained in the under part of the extremity of the abdomen, exhibiting a dull golden partition by day, and flashing occasionally by daylight, especially when the hand is shaken. At night the flashing is that of the purest and most lucid fire, spangling the vineyards and olive trees, and their dark avenues, with innumerable stars. Its use is not known in England; and I believe here the supposition is that it is a signal of love. It affords no perceptible heat, but is supposed to be phosphoric. In a dark room, a single one is sufficient to flash a light against the wall. I have read of a lady in the West Indies, who could see to read by the help of three under a glass, as long as they chose to accommodate her. During our abode in Genoa a few of them were commonly in our rooms all night, going about like little sparkling elves. It is impossible not to think of something spiritual in seeing the progress of one of them through a dark room. You only know it by the flashing of its lamp, which takes place every three or four inches apart, sometimes oftener, thus making its track in and out of the apartment, or about it; it is like a little fairy taking its rounds. These insects remind us of the lines in Herrick inviting his mistress to come to him at night-time, and they suit them still better than his English ones:

"Their lights the glow-worms lend thee;
The shooting stars attend thee;

And the elves also

Whose little eyes glow,

Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee."

To me, who when I was in Italy passed more of my time even than usual in the ideal world, the spiritual looking little creatures were more than commonly interesting. Shelley used to watch them for hours. I looked at them, and wondered whether any of the particles he left upon earth helped to animate their loving and lovely light. The last fragment he wrote, which was welcome to me on my arrival from England, began with a simile taken from their dusk look and the fire underneath it, in which he found a likeness to his friend. They had then just made their appearance for the season. There is one circumstance respecting these fire-flies quite as extraordinary as any; there is no mention of them in the ancient poets. Now of all insects, even southern, they are perhaps most obvious to poetical notice. It is difficult to conceive how any poet, much less a pastoral or an amatory poet, could help speaking of them; and yet they make their appearance neither in Greek nor Latin verse, neither in Homer nor Virgil, nor Ovid nor Anacreon, nor Theocritus. The earliest mention of them with which I am acquainted is in Dante (Inferno, canto 21), where he compares the spirits in the eighth circle of hell, who go about swathed in fire, to the “lucciole ” in a rural valley of an evening. A truly saturnine perversion of a beautiful object. Does nature put forth