the _Edinburgh_; and the
taunt about the Cockney School undoubtedly derived its venom from this
weakness of his. Lamb was not descended from the kings that long the
Tuscan sceptre swayed, and had some homely ways; Keats had to do with
livery-stables, Hazlitt with shady lodging-houses and lodging-house
keepers. But Keats might have been, whatever his weaknesses, his own and
Spenser's Sir Calidore for gentle feeling and conduct; the man who
called Lamb vulgar would only prove his own vulgarity; and Hazlitt,
though he had some darker stains on his character than any that rest on
Hunt, was far too potent a spirit for the fire within him not to burn
out mere vulgarity. Leigh Hunt I fear must be allowed to be now and
then merely vulgar--a Pogson of talent, of genius, of immense
amiability, of rather hard luck, but still of the Pogsons, Pogsonic.

As I shall have plenty of good to say of him, I may as well despatch at
once whatever else I have to say that is bad, which is little. The
faults of taste which have just been noticed passed easily into
occasional, though only occasional, faults of criticism. I do not
recommend anybody who has not the faculty of critical adjustment, and
who wants to like Leigh Hunt, to read his essay on Dante in the _Italian
Poets_. For flashes of crass insensibility to great poetry it is
difficult to match anywhere, and impossible to match in Leigh Hunt. His
favourite theological doctrine, like that of Beranger's hero, was, _Ne
damnons personne_. He did not like monarchy, and he did not understand
metaphysics. So the great poet, who, more than any other great poet
except Shakespeare, grows on those who read him, receives from Leigh
Hunt not an honest confession, like Sir Walter's, that he does not like
him, which is perhaps the first honest impression of the majority of
Dante's readers, but tirade upon tirade of abuse and bad criticism.
Further, Leigh Hunt's unfortunate necessity of preserving his own
journalism has made him keep a thousand things that he ought to have
left to the kindly shade of the newspaper files--a cemetery where, thank
Heaven, the tombs are not open as in the other city of Dis. The book
called _Table Talk_, for instance, contains, with a little better
matter, chiefly mere rubbish like this section:

BEAUMARCHAIS

Beaumarchais, author of the celebrated comedy of "Figaro," an
abridgment of which has been rendered more famous by the music
of Mozart, made a larg