It must be confessed that a less “fancy” vocabulary would here have shown a juster sense of Peter’s position.  Sometimes there is no burlesque intention apparent, but, in their curious way, the verses seem to express a genuine enthusiasm.  It is neither to be expected nor to be feared that any one nowadays will seriously attempt to advocate the most barbarous of pastimes, and therefore, without conscientious scruples, we may venture to admit that these are very fine and very thrilling verses in their own unexampled class: 

Oh, it is life! to see a proud And dauntless man step, full of hopes, Up to the P.C. stakes and ropes, Throw in his hat, and with a spring Get gallantly within the ring; Eye the wide crowd, and walk awhile Taking all cheerings with a smile; To see him strip,—­his well-trained form, White, glowing, muscular, and warm, All beautiful in conscious power, Relaxed and quiet, till the hour; His glossy and transparent frame, In radiant plight to strive for fame!  To look upon the clean-shap’d limb In silk and flannel clothed trim;—­ While round the waist the kerchief tied Makes the flesh glow in richer pride.  ’Tis more than life, to watch him hold His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, Over his second’s, and to clasp His rival’s in a quiet grasp; To watch the noble attitude He takes,—­the crowd in breathless mood,—­ And then to see, with adamant start, The muscles set,—­and the great heart Hurl a courageous, splendid light Into the eye,—­and then—­the FIGHT.

This is like a lithograph out of one of Pierce Egan’s books, only much more spirited and picturesque, and displaying a far higher and more Hellenic sense of the beauty of athletics.  Reynolds’ little volume, however, enjoyed no success.  The genuine amateurs of the prize-ring did not appreciate being celebrated in good verses, and The Fancy has come to be one of the rarest of literary curiosities.

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS; a Satire on William Gifford.  By Leigh Hunt.  London, 1823:  printed for John Hunt, 22, Old Bond Street, and 38, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden.

If the collector of first editions requires an instance from which to justify the faith which is in him against those who cry out that bibliography is naught, Leigh Hunt is a good example to his hand.  This active and often admirable writer, during a busy professional life, issued a long series of works in prose and verse which are of every variety of commonness and scarcity, but which have never been, and probably never will be, reprinted as a whole.  Yet not to possess the works of Leigh Hunt is to be ill-equipped for the minute study of literary history at the beginning of the century.  The original 1816 edition of Rimini, for instance, is of a desperate rarity, yet not to be able to refer to it in the grotesqueness of this its earliest form is to miss a most curious proof