e fortune by supplying the American
republicans with arms and ammunition, and lost it by
speculations in salt and printing. His comedy is one of those
productions which are accounted dangerous, from developing the
spirit of intrigue and gallantry with more gaiety than
objection; and they would be more unanimously so, if the good
humour and self-examination to which they excite did not suggest
a spirit of charity and inquiry beyond themselves.

Leigh Hunt tried almost every conceivable kind of literature, including
a historical novel, _Sir Ralph Esher_, several dramas (one or two of
which, the "Legend of Florence" being the chief, got acted), and at
nearly the beginning and nearly the end of his career two religious
works, or works on religion, an attack on Methodism and "The Religion of
the Heart." All this we may not unkindly brush away, and consider him
first as a poet, secondly as a critic, and thirdly as what can be best,
though rather unphilosophically, called a miscellanist.

Few good judges nowadays, I think, would deny that Leigh Hunt had a
certain faculty for poetry, and fewer still would rank it very high. To
something like, but less than, the tunefulness of Moore, he joined a
very much better taste in models and an infinitely wider and deeper
study of them. There is no doubt that his versification in "Rimini"
(which may be described as Chaucerian in basis with a strong admixture
of Dryden, further crossed and dashed slightly with the peculiar music
of the followers of Spenser, especially Browne and Wither) had a very
strong influence both on Keats and on Shelley, and that it drew from
them music much better than itself. This fluent, musical, many-coloured
verse was a capital medium for tale-telling, and Leigh Hunt is always at
his best when he employs it. The more varied measures and the more
ambitious aim of "Captain Sword and Captain Pen" seem to me very much
less successful. Not only was Leigh Hunt far from strong enough for a
serious argument, but the cheery, sentimental optimism of which he was
one of the most persevering exponents--the kind of thing which
vehemently protests that in the good time coming nobody shall be damned,
or starved, or put in prison, or subjected to the perils of villainous
saltpetre, or prevented from doing just what he likes, and that all
existence ought to be and shortly will be a vaguely refined beer and
skittles--did not lend itself very well to v