Southey, Crabbe, and Byron, were conspicuous, how few remain! Moore
(rapidly declining), Rogers (upward of eighty), Professor Wilson,
Montgomery, and Leigh Hunt, are nearly all. It is fitting that we
prize these few, as the remnants of a magnificent group, which cannot
be expected very soon to be repeated.

Leigh Hunt has, for nearly half a century, occupied a prominent place
in the public eye, as a politician of a peculiarly bold and decided
stamp, when boldness was necessary for the utterance of the truth;
and as a poet and prose-writer of a singularly-genial and amiable
character. As the chief founder and critic of the _Examiner_, he would
doubtless occupy a high place in literary history, but as the author
of "Rimini" he is entitled to a more enduring and enviable fame. This
will always stand at the head of his works: but his "Indicator," his
"London Journal," his "Jar of Honey," and others, abound with the
illustrations of a most imaginative and cordial spirit.

We are glad to possess a good autobiography of Leigh Hunt. It is the
first we have from a long list of celebrated men; and no one could
give us such correct, discerning, and delightful insights into their
usual life and true characters. Hazlitt, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Byron,
and a crowd of others become familiar to us in these pages. It was in
the _Examiner_ that the first compositions of Shelley and Keats were
introduced to the British public; and the friendship which Mr. Hunt
maintained with those poets, till their deaths, casts a sunshine over
that portion of his life, which is peculiarly charming.

Perhaps the two points of this Autobiography which will most attract
the attention of the reader are the author's imprisonment for a libel
on the Prince Regent, and his visit to Italy. In that imprisonment
of two years, he was visited by Byron, Moore, Brougham, Bentham,
and several other eminent men. In the journey to Italy, which was
undertaken in order to cooeperate with Byron and Shelley in bringing
out of the "Liberal," Hunt had the misfortune to be deprived of
Shelley's friendship, by death, immediately on his arrival; and of
the friendship of Byron, through incompatibilities of taste, and the
jealous officiousness of Byron's friends, amongst whom Moore bore a
prominent part. Mr. Hunt published a volume on the subject soon after
his return to England, which occasioned him a great deal of ill-will.
To this publication he now refers with expressions of mu