Cast your eyes down any list of English writers ... and almost the only
names that strike you as belonging to personally cheerful men are
Beaumont and Fletcher, Suckling, Fielding, Farquhar, Steele, O'Keefe,
Andrew Marvell, and Sterne.... I am only speaking of the rarity of a
certain kind of sunshine in our literature, and expressing a little
rainy-day wish that we had a little more of it. It ought to be
collected. There should be a joyous set of elegant extracts--a
_Literatura Hilaris_ or _Gaudens_,--in a score of volumes, that we could
have at hand, like a cellaret of good wine, against April or November
weather. Fielding should be the port, and Farquhar the champagne, and
Sterne the malmsey; and whenever the possessor cast an eye on his stock
he should know that he had a choice draught for himself after a
disappointment, or for a friend after dinner,--some cordial extract of
Parson Adams, or Plume, or Uncle Toby, generous as heart could desire,
and as wholesome for it as laughter for the lungs.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT.
_Cheerful Poets._