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Leigh huut...

At the age of 57. From an unpublished portrait by Mrs Gliddon, now drawn on wood by Mr Charles Gliddon, a connexion of the poet's family.

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LEIGH HUNT.*

I

N studying the prose of LEIGH HUNT, we make the acquaintance of what may be regarded as an intermediate

territory between the older and the newer styles of essay-writing. His youthful productions had a smack of the eighteenth century, and yet were not of it; his more mature works were distinguished in a great degree by the characteristics of to-day, and yet were in some measure different. His first ideas of literature were formed while the Johnsonian style was still dominant, before the French Revolution had had time to rouse the mind of Europe (or at least of England) out of its pseudo-scholastic lethargy, before the war with. Buonaparte had come to confront the nation with the stern truths of a new state of things, and while yet the great inventions of our own day were unsuspected, except by a few thoughtful brains. It was the worst period that our literature has ever known. The great dictator of Fleet Street had gone, leaving behind him a host of feeble satellites,

Some small portions of this Introduction have already appeared in other places.

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