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Untitled Article
it is real and right-out travelling . Good bye to you , Leigh Hunt , when it is ' On with the horses , off for Canterbury ; ' ( for Canterbury from London that is , and so forth ;) you are no miscellany for the Rhine and the Rhone , Mont Blanc and the Coliseum . But as to fireside and fields , they are at your service , Leigh Hunt ; come , and welcome . There you are ' at home , ' and so are we with you . These volumes ialk ; and very well they talk too ; and on a vast variety of subjects . They contain tales , both sad and sprightly , literal and imaginative , criticisms ,, descriptions , reflections , characters , aphorisms , puns , speculations ; in short , they are a sort of literary and poetical what-not . Old books and new , print and manuscript , plates and playbills , are scattered on its shelves ; you have only to fish , and bring up something good . Moreover , you are sure it will be short ; a comfortable security in a book for the fields and the fireside , where nobody wants long
stories . Amongst many others , perhaps as good , or it may be , some of them better , there is a beautiful redemption of the story of Godiva from commonplace vulgarity ; a pleasant collection of Memories connected with various parts of the Metropolis ; ' a touching anecdote of the mother of Thomas a Becket ; an ingenious social
genealogy , showing how , by lineal descent of cordialities , a livingman may have shaken hands with Shakspeare ; a glorious sketch of ' the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-driving ; ' a good * Earth upon Heaven ; ' and a beautiful tale , called * the Mountain of the Two Lovers ; ' any one of which is enough to put the reader in
good humour with the author , and establish their sociability , like that of agreeable companions in a stage-coach , for the rest of the journey , or the book . We mention them b y way of introducing the parties . We are not travelling ourselves just now , having business in town which must be done ; but we are sure you will like one another , and get on well to the end of your ride . There ; shut the coach-door ; good journey to you .
Every body knows the faults of Leigh Hunt ' s writings ; his occasional affectations , and his obvious consciousness . We therefore do not feel our critical character at all compromised by not writing a dissertation in proof or reproof of them ; especially as we do not put forth anotner dissertation in proof and praise of the many sterling qualities which those writings always exhibit . We would rather that when the author feels like a bov , he did not stop to think and say , ' How like a boy I do feel ! ' which , moreover , is not like , the boy never being deadly lively in that self-analyzing manner ; but we do not care much about this ; there are plenty of captious critics to make a fuss about it , and it
is but a trifle after all . Every observant reader of these volumes must feel that , light as they are , they let him into the real character and dispositions
Untitled Article
102 The Indicator and the Companion .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 102, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/18/
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