(I do not intend any disrespect by the comparison) he has much less
of the rock about him than of the shifting sand. I do not now speak of
the great Skimpole problem--we shall come to that presently--but merely
of the writer as shown in his works.

The works themselves are not particularly easy to get together in any
complete form, some of them being almost inextricably entangled in
defunct periodicals, and others reappearing in different guises in the
author's many published volumes. Mr. Kent's bibliography gives forty-six
different entries; Mr. Alexander Ireland's (to which he refers) gives, I
think, over eighty. Some years ago I remember receiving the catalogue of
a second-hand bookseller who offered what he very frankly confessed to
be far from a complete collection of the first editions, at the price of
a score or two of pounds; and here at least the first are in some cases
the only issues. Probably this is one reason why selections from Leigh
Hunt, of which Mr. Kent's is the latest and best, have been frequent. I
have seen two certainly, and I think three, within as many years.
Luckily, however, quite enough for the reader's if not for the critic's
purpose is easily obtainable. The poems can be bought in more forms than
one; Messrs. Smith and Elder have reprinted cheaply the "Autobiography,"
"Men, Women, and Books," "Imagination and Fancy," "The Town," "Wit and
Humour," "Table Talk," and "A Jar of Honey." Other reprints of "One
Hundred Romances of Real Life" (one of his merest pieces of book-making)
and of his "Stories from the Italian Poets," one of his worst pieces of
criticism, but agreeably reproduced in every respect save the hideous
American spelling, have recently appeared. The complete and uniform
issue, the want of which to some lovers of books (I own myself among
them) is never quite made up by a scratch company of volumes of all
dates, sizes, and prints, is indeed wanting. But still you can get a
working Leigh Hunt together.

It is when you have got him that your trouble begins; and before it is
done the critic, if he be one of those who are not satisfied with a mere
_compte rendu_, is likely to acknowledge that Leigh Hunt, if "Ariel" be
in some respects too complimentary a name for him, is at any rate a
most tricksy spirit. The finest taste in some ways, contrasting with
what can only be called the most horrible vulgarity in others; a light
hand tediously boring again and again at obviously miscomprehe