VIII. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF GOUNOD, Temple Bar, 131 144 156 165 176 182 187 190 130 130 192 TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and moncy-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. A WINTER NIGHT'S DREAM. "During the greatest extension of this ice sheet in the last glacial epoch, in fact, all England, except a small south-western corner (about Torquay and Bourne mouth), was completely covered by one enormous mass of glaciers, as is still the case with almost the whole of Greenland." (Grant Allen in "Falling in Love, and other Essays.") "My realm," so rang a strange voice in my dream, "Shall now be far extended as of old, Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill, In those glad days when I was young, and And with new-launchèd argosies of rhyme drove The feverish sun before me to the South!" A gleaming iceberg 'neath the Polar Star. Again he spake: "I have no care for life To me more grateful seem wide wastes of snow Where all is dumb; or, if there must be sound, "To-night that island, fairest of the flood, No mercy, none, need man expect from me- The voice was silent or I heard no more, Temple Bar. CUPID'S VISIT. I LAY sick in a foreign land; And by me on the right, A vessel full of injured things, His shivered bow, his bleeding wings; That I might mark each one; then pressed He shook the vision from my eyes. MICHAEL FIELD. Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear oar, The ave atque vale from the shore! To him nor tender nor heroic muse Faultless for him the lyre of life was strung, Himself the Merlin of his magic strain, WILLIAM WATSON. From The Cornhill Magazine. CONCERNING LEIGH HUNT. "WRITE me as one who loves his fellow men," are the words upon the stone under which lie the remains of Leigh Hunt. They were written by himself, and when the monument was erected to his memory in 1869, at Kensal Green, they were chosen by those who had known and loved him as the most appropriate to be inscribed over his grave. briefly alluded to here. In two of the lead. ing papers of the day had appeared some articles loaded with the most fulsome and extravagant eulogies on the prince regent, which awakened in Hunt a glow of honest indignation, and induced him to express in plain language his contempt for such toadyism in the pages of the Examiner, a newspaper which he started and edited jointly with his brother. The follies and vices of the regent were at that time a matter of common talk, but to make fearless and open allusion to them in a public journal was audacious. His own defence for what he wrote is contained in the following words: "Flattery in any shape is unworthy a man and a gentleman; but If it is true that "love begets love" it was presumably the poet's gentle, kindly nature that inspired men of all sorts and conditions with a friendly feeling towards him. With his personality has passed away, save in the minds of a very small remnant, the memory of its power. That political flattery is almost a request to be that power was remarkable is undoubted. Letters are now lying before the present writer addressed to him from Shelley, Keats, Browning, Carlyle, Charles Lamb, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others, containing such warm expressions of affection and esteem that one can hardly avoid regarding with a feeling akin to envy the favored individual into whose lap such treasures were poured. A curious mixture of qualities appears to have existed in his nature. To a simple, childlike faith in human nature, and a strong, enduring love of humanity without respect to creed, politics, or opinions, was united a hearty and healthy detestation of many of its common weaknesses. He possessed a singular facility for adapting himself to the tone of mind of the companion of the moment, throwing himself with equal ease into the gaiety or gravity of his friend's mood, but always detecting and disapproving on the instant the slightest expression of anything that savored of want of charity or kindly feeling towards others. His stern, unyielding aversion to pretence or sham resulted for him, as the world knows, in two years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of 500l., an episode to which he refers afterwards in simple words: "Much as it injured me, I cannot wish I had evaded it, for I believe that it has done good." The circumstances, which may not be fresh in the minds of all readers, may be made slaves. If we would have the great to be what they ought, we must find some means or other to speak of them as they are." An extract from the offending article is here given, which, in its turn, supplies us with a very fair idea of the nature of the sentiments so fearlessly attacked by Leigh Hunt. "What person," wrote the critic, "unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, on reading these astounding eulogies, that this 'Glory of the People' was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!—that this Protector of the Arts' had named a wretched foreigner his historical painter, in disparagement or in ignorance of the merits of his own countrymen ! — that this 'Mæcenas of the Age' patronized not a single deserving that this Breather of Elowriter ! quence' could not say a few decent extempore words, if we are to judge, at least, by what he said to his regiment on its embarkation for Portugal! - that this 'Conqueror of Hearts' was the disappointer of hopes! that this 'Exciter of Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!) this 'Adonis in loveliness,' was a corpulent man of fifty!-in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honorable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity!" The times have indeed changed since flattery of so gross and outrageous a nature as drew forth this reproof could with impunity be poured forth as incense to the great, and be suffered to pass unnoticed and unchallenged by a multitude whose ears were, unfortunately, too well attuned to such revolting displays of sycophancy. Another to his wife breathes the same spirit of fond affection: "Surrey Jail: May, 1813. "MY DEAREST Love, You may well imagine how your letter of yesterday relieved me, and what additional pleasure I received from the one of to-day. Your sorrow at having sent the former one delights while it pains me; but I knew you would feel as you do, and long to fold you in my arms to comfort you in return. I am glad Thornton bears his bathing so Leigh Hunt's manly and spirited attack well. I am afraid that I did indeed omit "did good" in more senses than one. He to ask about his riding, but by the next was undoubtedly the pioneer of a better post I hope to be able to send you the and more wholesome state of things. Men result of another application to Dr. Gooch, known to him by name only, as well as whom I have not yet seen. Pray take care tried and true friends, rallied round him, of yourself, for if I only fancy you are spoke up boldly in his defence, and not in getting these fits of illness upon you, with his defence only, but in hearty admiration your head tumbling about the hard back of his fearless outspokenness. And here of the chair and my arm not near to supappears the bright side of his prison ex-port it, I shall long to dash myself through periences; they resulted in the formation the walls of my prison, though pretty well of many valued and lifelong intimacies used to them by this time. between himself and those who were enabled to throw aside convention and range themselves on his side. But there was also to be endured the heaviness of a first separation from his wife and little children, and Leigh Hunt was the man of all others to feel this keenly and bitterly. This little letter to his boy, which I find in my collection, shows us, I think, another side of his character when compared with the stinging Examiner diatribe which brought so much trouble on his head. "Surrey Jail: May 17, 1813. "MY DEAR, GOOD LITTLE THORNTON, — I am quite glad to hear of your getting so much better. Try not to cry when you go into the warm bath; for it would not be a 'horrid warm bath' if you knew all the good it did you — it would be a nice, comfortable warm bath. Your dear papa likes a warm bath very much. I am much obliged to you for the marbles; mama will give you a kiss from me for them, and you must give a kiss to mama for papa. Your little sunflower grows very nicely, and has got six leaves, four of them large ones. "Your affectionate papa, "I am rather better myself this afternoon, though I have a good deal of fever hanging about me, with a strange, full sen. sation in my head that seems as if it arose from deafness, though I hear as well as ever; it is, I believe, the remains of rheu matism, and I should not care a pin for all the bodily pain I feel if my spirits were not affected at the same time. But still, I am more capable of being amused than I was formerly; a little continuation of fine weather brings me about surprisingly, and by the time these strange vicissitudes of sky have gone past, and you and the summer come back again, I hope to be myself once more. "Kiss my dear boys for me, and thank Thornton for his marbles. But you made me another present of the value of which I have been sleepyou were not aware. ing with a piece of flannel about my neck for some nights, after having my throat rubbed with hartshorn oil and laudanum, and last night I substituted the wadding, which was smoother and more comforta ble. I need not say with what additional comfort I laid my cheek upon it, coming from you." But the loss of liberty and freedom began to tell upon his health. He had every possible to disregard its voice. Steps were taken for the relaxation of many of the prison regulations hitherto relentlessly enforced; and finally, as the result of a letter written by Leigh Hunt to the governor of the prison, and which was probably perused (as it was intended to be) by other eyes than his, a very decided improvement for the better in their condition set in. The author's wife and children were allowed to live with him, in consider. ation of the delicate state of his health and the palpitations of his heart to which he was occasionally subject; and his urgent request that his friends, hitherto rigorously excluded, should be permitted to have access to him during the daytime was at length acceded to. "Poetry," he writes, "is trying work if your heart and spirits are in it, particularly with a weak body. The concentration of your faculties, and the necessity and ambition you feel to extract all the essential heat of your thoughts, seem to make up that powerful and exhausting effect called An era of brighter days now began. An inspiration. The ability to sustain this, extra room or two was to be had (for payas well as all other exercises of the spirit, ment) in the prison, and the small preparawill evidently depend in some measure tions for the reception of his dear ones are upon the state of your frame; so that from time to time referred to in the family Dryden does not appear to have been alto- letters. A gay wall paper was provided gether so fantastical in dieting himself (of roses climbing over a trellis ! - one for a task of verse; nor Milton, and can imagine some of our latter-day æsothers, in thinking their faculties stronger at particular periods; though the former, perhaps, might have rendered his caution unnecessary by undeviating temperance, and the latter have referred to the sunshine of summer, or the indoor snugness of frosty weather, what they chose to attribute to a lofty influence." thetes fainting with horror at that which afforded so much pleasure); some bookshelves were put up and filled with familiar guests; and when loving hands busied themselves with putting finishing touches to the whole, the gloomy quarters seemed exchanged for something like a substitute for the home for which the prisoner had been pining. There was a tiny yard, too, outside this room, which was also considered his "a vegetable and flower garden," he calls it, in compliment to a fine scarlet-runner he had planted, which did its best to enliven the little domain by flinging its bright red blossoms over the wall of lattice-work that divided it from the neighboring yard. Here," he says, "I shut my eyes in my armchair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles away." But while suffering keenly from the restrictions to which his genial nature rendered him peculiarly susceptible, his courage and the faith in his convictions appear to have remained unshaken. He was put to the test. An intimation was conveyed to him, and also to his brother John, who was undergoing imprisonment elsewhere, that if they were willing to abstain in future from any comments on the sayings and doings of his Royal Highness, the government would take measures to spare them both the fine and the impris- Leigh Hunt's eldest daughter was born onment. These overtures were promptly in prison. "Never shall I forget my declined. Without mutual consultation sensations when she came into the world the brothers emphatically refused to give. . . a thousand recollections rise within any promises on the subject whatsoever. So strong was the public feeling excited by the severe measures taken against John and Leigh Hunt that it became almost im me such as I cannot trust myself to dwell upon," are the words in which he afterwards alludes to her advent. Some have talked of the "improvidence" of Leigh |