Beaumont and Fletcher; or, the Finest Scenes, Lyrics

1855. HUNT, Leigh. Beaumont and Fletcher; or, the Finest Scenes, Lyrics, and Other Beauties of Those Two Poets, Now First Selected from the Whole of Their Works, to the Exclusion of Whatever is Morally Objectionable: with Opinions of Distinguished Critics, Notes, Explanatory and Otherwise, and a General Introductory Preface. Contemporary 3/4 calf and marbled boards, gilt-ruled raised spine bands, all edges marbled. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855. First edition. Presentation inscription from the author on the ?-title. "To Southwood Smith from his affectionate friend, Leigh Hunt." Below it is additionally inscribed "Stolen from S. S. Hibernice-i.e. before he has got it, to give to my kind visitor, J.R. Lowell. L. H." Thomas Southwood Smith (1788-1861) was encouraged by William Blake to study for the ministry. Having done so, he then studied medicine. Noting that epidemic fever was closely associated with the impoverishment of the poor, he became one of the great proponents of sanitary reform. Smith was close friend and correspondent with a number of writers and actors including Leigh Hunt and Charles Dickens. In 1856, Hunt wrote "Inscription for the Bust of Dr. Southwood Smith" that begins "Ages will honour, in their hearts enshrined, Thee, Southwood Smith, physician of mankind." This copy, however, was never given to Smith but, instead, presented to James Russell Lowell. Hunt often used "Hibernice" in his letters. Literally the word means "in the Irish fashion"; Hunt uses it to mean paradoxically or seemingly illogically. That is to say, Hunt never gave this copy to Smith but instead snatched it off his desk and presented it to his American friend, James Russell Lowell. He was in London while on a year of leave granted him by Harvard before taking on the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages. Lowell wrote of Hunt "No man has ever understood the delicacies and luxuries of language better than he; and his thoughts often have all the rounded grace and shifting luster of a dove's neck.. He was as pure-minded a man as ever lived, and a critic whose subtlety of discrimination and whose soundness of judgment, supported as it was on a broad basis of truly liberal scholarship, have hardly yet won fitting appreciation." Gilt on spine slightly dulled, faint foxing to pastedowns, else a very good copy.