MR. LEIGH HUNT'S POEMS.

A handsome and correct edition of a poet's works has been described as the noblest monument that can be raised to his genius. Such an edition of the poetical writings of Mr. LEIGH HUNT is about to appear, under auspices which will render the publication at once interesting and memorable. The work is to be brought out, as was Pope's Homer, under the affectionate guardianship of personal friends and admirers, and of such literary and public characters as are entitled to shew that they can sympathize with a man of genius, suffering from broken health and domestic difficulties. Among the names of the sponsors to the forthcoming work, it is gratifying to find in alliance those of WORDSWORTH and CAMPBELL. The price of the volume is to be one guinea; and, besides Rimini-a work which will not soon be forgotten-and Mr. HUNT's shorter pieces, it will include a new poem of considerable length. It is needless to say how cordially we wish success to this scheme of making Mr. LEIGH HUNT's early labours minister to his present comfort, and to placing him, as his friends say, "in advance of his difficulties." We are peculiarly desirous to see this design liberally and handsomely supported in Scotland, believing that, nationally, we owe such atonement to Mr. HUNT as may prove that this country is no party to the offence and injury which have been offered him. We need scarcely remind our readers that his case was the instance, by which the Edinburgh Review chose to illustrate that organized system of persecution and calumny, brought to bear upon every literary man, who dared to entertain and express an honest or independent opinion on any public question. An early opportunity may be looked for of speaking of Mr. LEIGH HUNT's literary productions as we feel; it is enough that his private hardships have been public gain. With less honesty, and more tact, he might have been a prosperous, as he is confessedly a talented man; but we should then have had no Examiner. Laying aside his fine, versatile, and graceful genius, displayed in many walks of literature, we rest his claim to public gratitude on that periodical alone, and consider it one of urgent weight. In the "worst of times," under his pilotage, it held on its course with courage, perseverance, and single-minded consistency; and we are at this day, in triumph, reaping the fruits it sowed under persecution and opprobrium. These are not services to be lightly forgotten.

The small spark of the sacred fire, cherished in defiance of the fiercest intolerance, and often threatened to be extinguished, has now burst forth,

Like fire to heather set;

but every feeling of justice and generosity forbids that its wide-spread brilliancy, and the eager crowd of new worshippers that now surround its altars, should obscure or hide from view, were it but the least of the original high priests of Freedom. Among that band Mr. LEIGH HUNT is eminent. His past services have a more powerful claim than his present sufferings. Taken together the plea is irresistible.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The times are political, and so, of course, are we. This is an apology to our literary correspondents; the public at large requires none, for it is too much engrossed with the business of real life to find leisure for imaginative indulgence. Next month we hope to find room for some of the many valuable contributions in the department of elegant letters, with which we have been favoured.

We humbly beg to impress upon the minds of our friendly correspondents, that "brevity is the soul of wit." We like an article all the better for containing much matter, but we object to its being extended over much space. Gold is, in our eyes, more valuable in the grain than in the leaf.

Young authors are proverbially subject to a nervous affection-a fluttering impatience to know the fate of their articles. They may be assured of our sympathy; but really our time is too valuable to be spent in practising "the soothing system," which their malady requires. No definitive answer respecting the fate of an article can be given earlier than the first publication-day subsequent to its transmission.

We may take this opportunity of stating, that all contributions, advertisements, and bills, must be forwarded to W. TAIT, Edinburgh, and SIMPKIN and MARSHALL, London, at the very latest, by the 8th of the month.

TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

THE MINISTRY.

Ir is proverbial that men, individually honest, will be, collectively, roguish; whence, observes the poet,

،، Chartered boroughs are so great a plague ;"

and the reasons of this truth do not lie very deep: but it baffles all philosophy to explain how it is that men, so able individually as are some of his Majesty's ministers, are, collectively, so incapable. Tory cabinets were compounded like the witches' charms:-a number of worthless things-newts, toads, baboons' blood, and ounces of a redhaired hypocrite, were flung together; and the mess worked potently for mischief. But the contrary is the effect of mingling the good qualities of Whigs, which, as if by a chemical process, render a result having no property in common with the chief elements employed. Three men of stronger will than Lords Grey, Durham, and Palmerston, could hardly be brought together; and yet, indecision and wavering have marked all the conduct of the administration, excepting in the single instance of their constancy to the bill—to which, however, they were fixed by the country; and, though firm in adherence to the thing, they have been unsteady in their mode of carrying it on, and have tottered most uneasily under the precious burthen. For talent again, there are Lords Brougham, Melbourne, and Grey; Lord Althorp too, a sensible man-one certainly above the average understanding, though not acute or felicitous in the delivery of his thoughts-and yet the counsels directed by such men have been feeble and crude; and they have been set forth with a niaiserie of manner, which has even disgraced their intrinsic demerits. Lord John Russell, though never rated as a miracle of sapience, was reputed a man who would not run his head against a wall, or walk into a well, and yet he has amazed all by the surface of insufficiency he has developed. In one respect, both he and his noble colleague are godlike. When the enemy pierces them with logical arms, the weapons pass through and through without making any impression, or producing any other effect than the discharge of a humour fitter for Heaven than for earth. That there must be a radical fault in the cabinet is clear, when so much strength is included in it, and so much weakness mani

VOL. I.

A

fested. The truth is, that it is composed of incompatibles; the talent is connected with conflicting principles. The ministry may be thus classified :

:

Again, rating these men according to ability, they would stand thus:

There is no head here for Lord Althorp:-honesty is his denomination. We are yet more at a loss for a place for Lord Lansdowne. He has not enough talent, official aptitude, or rhetoric, to come under the heads, and yet he does not fall so short as to make the justice of his exclusion clear. He is a lover of ease and his order. Most of these men are, however, so mottled in their opinions and affections, that it is difficult to assign them any distinct denomination. Lord Durham is believed to be the staunchest reformer. He cannot be called teres et rotundus; but he has the reputation of being a most indisputable thorn to the declared enemies and false friends of the people. He is honoured with the fiercest hatred and most virulent abuse of the Tory party. Lord Brougham, by those who best know him, and whose judgment is of high authority, is said to have all good objects at heart: but his reputation lies at this disadvantage, that he is perpetually finessing against himself, while his friends are backbiting and his enemies slavering on him. The retainers of the aristocratical ministers are incessantly throwing suspicion and abuse on the Chancellor. It is no bad rule to judge of the affections of the masters by the conduct of the servants. This would give us the clue to one weakness of the Cabinet. The reputation of Lord Melbourne for talent we take on private report. Certain it is, that his talent has not manifested itself in the cause of reform, or in connexion with any one popular or useful object. His defence of the new beer bill, so important to the comfort of the poor, and the purity of the magistracy, was worse than any attack could have been. He is one of those men who are said to be very clever, only they do not show it. He is reported to be an extraordinarily great man in his Home Office. His affections, however, have long been notorious for every thing severe and unpopular which a man professing Whig politics could favour without losing caste. He has been a Whig who might much better have been cast a Tory of the Castlereagh school. Lord Palmerston again was a Tory of this iron school, a thorough hack for the road to ruin; there he exer cised his best paces, and used to kick at Joseph Hume. Lord Goderich is an amiable man, par negotiis, who would pull very well with other men of a right sort, but whose leanings will be to the worse, (the aristocratical side,) where there are two, because his timidity inclines him to the stationary party; as we see an old woman in a carriage-way stand stock-still under the horses' noses, lest she should run into danger. We now come to the character, the development of which has been such a surprise to the country, Earl Grey. The world gave him credit for statesmanship. They who knew him more closely, were aware that he was wanting in the first essential of statesmanship, the knowledge

of the status. For years he had kept up no acquaintance with the world, either through books or conversation. The changes which have been so rapidly taking place in the public mind, have been unmarked by him. He is a political neophyte in his old age. He takes up the world as he laid it down, and thinks it will yet bound submissive to the ruler's racket. In rhetoric, he is as accomplished and vigorous as ever; in his understanding, there seems to be but the one fault, that he knows not what he has to do with. He is like Dominie Sampson, resuming the early lessons of "little Harry Bertram," six feet high, precisely where they were broken off, when he was whipped up by the gauger. He spouts as mere phrases, sentiments which have ceased to pass as phrases, and are resented as propositions of oppression. The reception of his talk about vindicating the rights of the Irish clergy and crushing resistance, must have astonished him about as much, as the poor Dey of Algiers was amazed in Italy, when a question was raised, as to his privilege of strangling one of his attendants, and peremptorily decided in the negative. The exile had simply forgotten the difference of time and place; and Algiers does not differ more from Italy, than England as it is differs from England as it was, when Earl Grey finished the impressions of his mind. For years he has lived in a haughty retirement, suffering much from ill health, and vacant for hypochondriacal fancies. It is still a matter of wonder, that so bold and well cast a measure as the Reform Bill, should have proceeded from such a condition of intellect. Here was no misapprehension of the state of opinion, and the necessities of the times; but while he espouses the cause, he sets himself against the consequences, while he affords the means of redress, he declares for the inviolability of abuses. Again, in the conduct of the Reform Bill itself, there is the precise converse of this inconsistency. As in the reform pregnant with all other reforms, he affords the means, while he pledges himself to resist, the objects; so, on the other hand, in the conduct of it, he has proposed the object, and, up to the hour at which we write, withheld the means. One moment we see him busy, and earnest in making bricks without straw; and, at another, we hear him declaring, that not a part of our tottering pile shall be altered or amended. He would and he would not. He would give the people their rights and continue their wrongs. He would give the people power with the one hand, and oppose their resistance of abuses with the other. He reforms a corrupt Parliament, and threatens to vindicate with the bullet and the bayonet, an exaction for which no service is rendered.* He would concede to public opinion in the ruling measure, and resist it at the hazard of civil war, in the instance of a particular abuse, intolerable to seven millions of people subjected to it, and to another twelve millions who witness it, and make common cause as to the principle, and sympathize with those engaged in the struggle against it.

These various inconsistencies favour the opinion that the plan of reform was the work of a mind bolder and more cognizant of the times; and to Lord Durham it is attributed. However this fact may be, and whatever may be the causes of the contradictions we have noticed, it cannot be denied that the Premier's advocacy of the measure has been pre-eminently able and intrepid. In rhetoric there has been no failure on his part. The failing has been in the incomparably more important

* Lord Althorp has since explained, that it is not intended to maintain the tithe system, but to punish resistance to it before justice is rendered.

point of action. Indeed, his have been the only speeches denoting any breadth of view, and piercing comprehension. It is strange that a man who so accurately apprehended the state of the public mind, with relation to this question, should show so profound an ignorance of it in other instances, in which it is unequivocally manifested. None, however," are so blind as those who will not see."

The distribution of the ministerial patronage is another example of the neglect of means, which seems hardly reconcileable with zeal for the objects professed. What are the people to think when they see arms from their own arsenals presented to their enemies? The effect is not singly to deprive the popular side of certain powers, which go to increase the hostile force; but also the sanction of opinion is conveyed to the enemy by these signs of extraordinary preference. The argument is, that their merits must be great, their claims overwhelming, when even their adversaries are compelled to pass over their own supporters, and acknowledge the superior qualification of their foes. As this elates the Tory party, so it abashes the Liberals; who have to bear the scoff of their opponents, and either to confess their own unworthiness, or to call in question the justice and courage of their leaders.

All men were amazed that Lord Hill, the nominee of the Duke of Wellington, was continued in the command of the army. Why was it to seem that the Tories only could produce a man fit to be Commanderin-Chief? Why were the Tories' bellowing threats of civil war to be comforted in their folly, by seeing one of their faction at the head of the army, an enemy in our camp, and in command of our camp! Lord Hill did not vote on the Reform Bill. Sir Henry Parnell did not vote on the Russian Dutch Loan. Lord Hill was continued in the command, which should never have been confided to him. Sir Henry Parnell was instantly dismissed from the only office in the Government held by one whose qualifications far exceeded the place assigned for their exercise. Sir Henry committed a fault, but unconsciously. It is a pregnant fact, that he had no notion that his withholding his vote would be offensive to the Ministry. He had seen them so negligent of support, so careless of absolute hostility, so tolerant of actual injury, that he could hardly suppose, that, in taking the precise course on a secondary question, which Lord Hill had pursued on the vital one with impunity, he should provoke his colleagues to a rupture. But it was the old quarrel of the wolf and the lamb. Sir Henry had long discovered himself to be too good an economist for his colleagues. He did not leave his principles at the door of his office, and they were disagreeable where such things are not customary. He talked of retrenchment as if he were still on the "other side" of the House. To most fabrics there is an outside and an inside; the outside smooth and specious, the inside less fit for inspection, and laid next to self; it is especially so with the mantle of Government, the wrong side of which comes next the skin.

Earl Grey's use of his patronage has not been more blameable than Lord Brougham's, which is next in importance. A capital error, and apparently without a motive, was the appointment of Mr. Horne to the Solicitor-Generalship. As the new Chancellor was deficient in knowledge of equity, it was the more necessary that he should have a Solicitor-General who could assist and upbear him. We need not say how he has provided for his wants. The thing is ludicrous-the jest of the court and the commons. Then, in the new Bankrupt Courtthat notable specimen of blundering, for the costly clumsiness of