Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859:  a novelist, a poet, an editor, a critic, a companion of literary men, Hunt occupies a distinct position among the authors of his day.  Wielding a sensible and graceful rather than a powerful pen, he has touched almost every subject in the range of our literature, and has been the champion and biographer of numerous literary friends.  He was the companion of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamb, Coleridge, and many other authors.  He edited at various times several radical papers—­The Examiner, The Reflector, The Indicator, and The Liberal; for a satire upon the regent, published in the first, he was imprisoned for two years.  Among his poems The Story of Rimini is the best.  His Legend of Florence is a beautiful drama.  There are few pieces containing so small a number of lines, and yet enshrining a full story, which have been as popular as his Abou Ben Adhem.  Always cheerful, refined and delicate in style, appreciative of others, Hunt’s place in English literature is enviable, if not very exalted; like the atmosphere, his writings circulate healthfully and quietly around efforts of greater poets than himself.

James Hogg, 1770-1835:  a self-taught rustic, with little early schooling, except what the shepherd-boy could draw from nature, he wrote from his own head and heart without the canons and the graces of the Schools.  With something of the homely nature of Burns, and the Scottish romance of Walter Scott, he produced numerous poems which are stamped with true genius.  He catered to Scottish feeling, and began his fame by the stirring lines beginning;

    My name is Donald McDonald,
    I live in the Highlands so grand.

His best known poetical works are The Queen’s Wake, containing seventeen stories in verse, of which the most striking is that of Bonny Kilmeny.  He was always called “The Ettrick Shepherd.”  Wilson says of The Queen’s Wake that “it is a garland of fresh flowers bound with a band of rushes from the moor;” a very fitting and just view of the work of one who was at once poet and rustic.

Allan Cunningham, 1785-1842; like Hogg, in that as a writer he felt the influence of both Burns and Scott, Cunningham was the son of a gardener, and a self-made man.  In early life he was apprenticed to a mason.  He wrote much fugitive poetry, among which the most popular pieces are, A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea, Gentle Hugh Herries, and It’s Hame and it’s Hame.  Among his stories are Traditional Tales of the Peasantry, Lord Roldan, and The Maid of Elwar.  His position for a time, as clerk and overseer of Chantrey’s establishment, gave him the idea of writing The Lives of Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.  He was a voluminous author; his poetry is of a high lyrical order, and true to nature; but his prose will not retain its place in public favor:  it is at once diffuse and obscure.