Leigh Hunt Author:Reginald Brimley Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.—POET. Leigh Hunt, at least in early days, found his greatest pleasure in the composition of verse, and fixed his ambitions upon becoming a fine poet. He ... more »never quite realised the hopelessness of the attempt, though his eagerness waned, and he could criticise his own work with even undue severity. The earliest printed verses of which we have any record, entitled "Melancholy/'appearedin The European Magazine for 1801, when the author was just sixteen ; and he contributed in the same year to The Juvenile Library. But the boy was already a voluminous writer, and, in 1801 again, was published that "heap of imitations, all but absolutely worthless," to quote his own description — Juvenilia ; or, A Collection of Poems, written between the Ages of Twelve and Sixteen, by J. H, L. Hunt, late of the Grammar School of Christ's Jiospital, and dedicated by Permission to the Hon. J. H. Leigh ; containing Miscellanies, Translations, Sonnets, Pastorals, Elegies, Odes, Hymns, and Anthems. In his Autobiography, Leigh Hunt is very severe upon this ambitious production; but subsequent critics have found food for kindly comment within its pages. It was really a clever book for so young a writer, and shows a considerable acquaintance with many authors not generally beloved of schoolboys. Characteristics and sentitnents appear in this early volume which remained with him through life. The pleasures of friendship, awarded a.first place in his "An Earth upon Heaven" (The Companion, April 2, 1828), are here sung with unmeasured enthusiasm ; a sincere affection for simple English, not to say suburban, scenery is clearly evinced; and, as already hinted, a loving familiarity with literature pervades the work. Moreover, his own tastes, fancies, and sentiments are expressed, with a strange combinati...« less