words and lines which struck the editor as espe-1 cially good: "Tot homines, tot mentes"-nine men out of ten will select different objects of pleasure in an extract of any length, and we can safely say, that not one in ten of Mr. Hunt's markings strike us as containing any thing to be admired; it is, therefore, unpleasant to have obtruded upon one, a passage or expression in which one can see but little or no beauty. Even where the tastes agree, it mars to a great extent the effect of a pleasing idea, to have it thus separated and thrust upon us. Let any one read the "Eve of St. Agnes," by a common edition, and then with the aid of Mr. Hunt's markings and accents, and he will speedily find the difference. So much for the design. As for the execution, it is even worse. From the whole body of English poets, the only ones from whom he has culled are Spenser, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, Middleton, Dekker,* and Webster, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. He has been singularly unfortunate in his extracts. all the really beautiful passages selected, every reader of poetry is already familiar, and those that are not common are not worth much. For in With "MAY. Character, Budding Beauty in male and female; Animal And Cupid's self about her flùttered all in green.” "Raphael would have delighted, (but Titian's colors would be required,) in the lovely and liberal uniformity of this picture (!),—the young goddess May, supported aloft; the two brethren on each side [this should be either side]; birds in the air, and Cupid streaming overhead in his green mantle. Imagine the little fellow, with a body of Titian's carnation, tumbling in the air, and playfully holding the mantle, which is amply flying behind rather than concealing him. "This charming stanza beats (!) the elegant but more formal invitation to May, by Milton, who evidently had it in his recollection, &c." Of such mediocre extracts; marked for especial stance, from Shakespeare he quotes the inagical admiration, such rambling and inconclusive critiportion of the Tempest, the witch-scene in Mac- cism, and such maundering, “jaunty," and carebeth, the fairy plot of the Midsummer's-Night less style is a great part of this work composed. Dream, the beautiful scene of Jachimo in Imogen's A painter would not find it easy to catch the chachamber, and two or three little extracts. Milton racters of these pictures from the explication of contributes L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Hunt, darkening what before was none of the and one or two of the best known passages in clearest. Turner, or Maclise might well hesitate Paradise Lost, and Comus. It is most easy to if presented with such a subject as the following manufacture a book thus, extracting a dozen pages "LANDSCAPE, WITH DAMSELS CONVEYING A WOUNDED SQUIRE ON "Character, Select Southern Elegance, with an intimation of at a time, as Dr. Aikin did, on a larger scale, in the 66 4 And here is another, even more difficult to com SHEPHERD'S PIPE; OR, APOTHEOSIS OF A POET'S MISTRESS. Character, Nakedness without Impudency: Multitudinous and Innocent Delight; Exaltation of the Principal Person from Circumstances, rather than her own Ideality; Painter, Albano." ing that England would have possessed, in the per- THE NYMPHS AND GRACES DANCING TO A son of one man, her Claude, her Annibal Caracci, her Correggio, her Titian, her Rembrandt, perhaps even her Raphael." In order to establish the truth of this amusing catalogue of incongruous and multitudinous excellence to the complete satisfaction of the most sceptical, he proceeds to give a "Gallery of Pictures" from Spenser's writings, naming the painters to whom they should be assigned. Some of these, with the accompanying comments and descriptions, provoke our risible faculties considerably, and show Mr. Hunt's critical powers in a new light. * Contrary to all authority, Hunt writes this name "Decker," thereby spoiling completely its pleasant antiquated appearance. But the supreme genins of the poet, so transcends that of the highest painters, that it requires the combined efforts of several to do justice to some of his conceptions. Concerning “Una, (or Faith in Distress,)" the editor remarks, "May I say, that I think it would take Raphael and Correggio united, to paint this, on account of the exquisite chiaro-scuro? Or, might not the painter of the Magdalen have it all to himself!" Buz and hum they cry, And so do we. In his ear, in his nose, And this little specimen of Ben Jonson's weakest moments is praised unmeasurably !* Mr. Hunt is not peculiarly happy in his selections. His two favorite topics are witchcraft and luxury. With respect to the latter, he quotes long catalogues of dainties and luxuries from Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Keats, with a kind of gloating earnestness that is quite amusing. As to the former, such scenes possess, perhaps, less interest than any others that could be selected. Even Shakespeare has mingled amid the horrors of his, But it is not only in the poverty of many of the much that is silly and ludicrous; and it will be ob- passages selected, that Hunt has missed his aim. served, that the terrible in it is entirely derived He calls his book "Imagination and Fancy," and from its human associations, the causes which states that his extracts are made to exhibit the lure Macbeth to it, and the effect produced on him. most poetical part of poetry, (such, we presume, But the two others, also quoted by Hunt, from Ben as the ones just instanced.) But many of them Jonson and Middleton, are purely witch-scenes; and could, with much more propriety, be classed as as there are no human actors, the only impression poetry of the passions. Marlowe's "Come live that they leave is disgust mingled with amusement. with me and be my Love," Coleridge's "GeneCertainly not much can be said for the taste which vieve," "Age and Youth," and many others not not only quotes the following as a fine passage, but so well known, have but small claim to their stamarks part of it for especial admiration. We ask tions here. Another instance occurs in one of our readers if they see any unusual beauty in the Shelley's beautiful little songs, which, though no lines honored with italics, by Mr. Hunt's critical doubt familiar to our readers, they will pardon us for again presenting to their notice. We discard the Editor's senseless italics. acumen. "4th Hag. And I have been choosing out this skull 6th Hag. I had a dagger: what did I with that? Kill'd an infant to have his fat. Charm. I scratch'd out the eyes of the owl before, I tore the bat's wing; what would you have more? Blacker go in, and blacker come out : At thy going down, we give thee a shout; Hoo! At thy rising again, thou shalt have two; A cloud of pitch, a spur and a switch, "One word is too often profaned For prudence to smother, "I can give not what men call love; The worship the heart lifts above, From the sphere of our sorrow." This is the quintessence of feeling, wrung from the sadness of a true poet, not a mere specimen of "Imagination and Fancy." But, beautiful as it is, there are many things in Shelley even finer, and which more decidedly merit a place in a collection (A loud and beautiful music is heard, and the Witches like this, for Shelley was essentially the poet of vanish.") the imagination. Leigh Hunt's faults of omission In a little book like this, collected by a man of are, however, even graver than those of commisHunt's age and literary acquirements, we have a sion. In Shelley, for instance, why not have given us that exquisite piece of imagination, right to expect an array of gems; that there shall be nothing in it not worthy of all admiration. We surely should not be presented with a parcel of follies like the above, or a little inanity, such as the following "Catch of Satyrs," which follows on the same page. "The *To do Mr. Hunt justice, he does not praise this himself, but he quotes some highly laudatory remarks on it, by doing which he of course endorses them, giving whatever additional weight his name carries with it. "It is impossible that anything could better express than this, either the wild and practical joking of the Satyrs, or the action of the "Silenus bids his Satyrs awake a couple of Sylvans, who have thing described, or the quaintness and fitness of the imafallen asleep while they should have kept watch." "Buz, quoth the blue fly, Hum, quoth the bee; ges, or the melody and even the harmony, the intercourse of the musical words one with another. None but a boon companion, with a very musical ear, could have written it." And this is criticism! Cloud;" some passages from Alastor, "The Sen- [ no microscopic eye in many of the passages quoted. sitive Plant," "Lines written among the Euganean His old coined words, "sphery," "prosaicalness," Hills," "The Spirit of Delight," or a hundred "unsuperfluousness," "one-ness," &c., still occaother equally beautiful gems, in place of the tire- sionally flutter round his pen, and force themselves some lines "To a Lady with a Guitar," which is in, despite his better judgment. He speaks of a specimen of his flattest moods. But, if we be- " Bottom and his brother mechanicals” in Midsumgin to enumerate what should have been here, we mer's Night Dream, and defines Count Cenci, in shall not soon have done. We know Hunt to be Shelley's magnificent tragedy, to be “a potent ruffond of the elder poets, then why have we nothing fian." Sometimes, indeed, he ambitiously attempts from Raleigh, Giles, and Phineas Fletcher, Carew, a higher flight than his ordinary, careless, slipDrayton, Ford, Massinger, Suckling, Cowley, Love-shod, chatty, rambling style, and then his hippolace and Waller? Why that hiatus valdè deflendus griff, ascending into unaccustomed regions, befrom Milton to Coleridge? Is there nothing in comes so utterly bewildered, that its devious course Dryden, Parnell, Prior, Gay, Pope, Thomson, Collins, Gray, Young, Akenside, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Campbell, Byron, Scott, or Southey, worthy to adorn Mr. Hunt's pages? Was imagination a faculty totally dormant throughout the eighteenth century? The truth of the matter is, that Hunt feels his slender claims to immortality as a poet are entirely destroyed, if any of the writers, from Milton to Coleridge, are admitted to be poets, and he therefore endeavors to hug himself into a theory and a belief, by which they shall be entirely excluded. can scarcely be traced. How lucid is the following final definition of verse! He evidently feels that in it he has exhausted the subject; there is nothing more to be said concerning it, and that from so self-evident a decision there is no appeal. "Verse, in short, is that finishing and rounding, and tuneful planetting' of the poet's creations, which is produced of necessity by the smooth tenthe harmonious dance into which they are attractdencies of their energy, or inward working, and ed round the orb of the beautiful." It remains now but to say a few words concernWell done! We especially like that idea of the ing the style in which the editor's part of the work poet's creations skipping it on the light fantastic is written. We have given a specimen or two of toe, and many-twinkling feet, round the "orb of his commentaries on the selected passages. These the beautiful." The only regret it leaves with us are sometimes produced in a style rambling, chatty, is, that we had not been there to see it. diffuse, and incomprehensible, as the following on a line in Spenser, "The World of Waters, Wide and Deep." Of Leigh Hunt, it may verily be said "nihil quod teligit non inquinavit.” He attempts to praise nothing that he does not tend to lower in our estimation. His panegyric on Shelley, in " Byron and his Cotemporaries," for a while almost gave us a dislike to that noble and nearly blameless character. He has a trifling, childish manner of praising, that frequently disgusts one with the objects of his admiration. How disagreeable are "How complete a sense of the ocean under one of its aspects! Spenser had often been to sea, and his pictures of it, or in connection with it, are frequent and fine accordingly, superior, perhaps, to any other poet, Milton certainly, except in that one famous imaginative passage, in which he describes a fleet at a distance as seeming to hang in the clouds. And Shakespeare throws himself wonderfully into the following remarks concerning Shakespeare, a storm at sea, as if he had been in the thick of whom he is comparing with Dante! it, though it is not known that he ever quitted land. But nobody talks so much about the sea, or its inhabitants, or its voyagers as Spenser," &c.* "It is far better, that as a higher, more universal, and more beneficent variety of the genus Poet, he should have been the happier man he was, and Sometimes, however, he is equally terse and ele-left us the plump cheeks on his monument, instead gant, as in the following remark on Coleridge's of the carking visage of the great, but over-serious pretty verses on "Youth and Age." "This is one of the most perfect poems for style, feeling, and every thing (!) that ever were written." Hunt has somewhat improved his language since his palmy days, when he wrote the Lingua Cockneyana, and was truculently blackguarded by Christopher North. He still retains, however, à portion of the old leaven, and some of his vulgar smartness and "jauntiness," may be discerned with * How contemptibly Hunt here shows his envy of Byron; not eveu mentioning the name of him, whose descriptions of the sea are much more masterly than those of any other writer. and one-sided Florentine. Even the imagination of Spenser, whom we take to have been anervous gentleman" compared with Shakespeare, was visited with no such dreams as Dante. Or, if it was, he did not choose to make himself thinner, (as Dante says he did.) with dwelling upon them. He had twenty visions of nymphs and bowers, to one of the mud of Tartarus." It were shame to interfere with the effect of so poetical a passage, by any more of our own remarks. Philadelphia, 1845. L. RUSH'S RESIDENCE AT THE COURT OF LONDON.* 66 force, the panegyrics of yet warmer admirers, and the tremendous invective of Robert Hall, how is poor, puzzled Posterity to make up its estimate of This is not a book to excite raptures in the the great Premier? His monument, however, seen reader, nor to keep his fancy or his risibles per- by Mr. Rush in Guildhall, has an inscription petually tickled, as Mr. Willis' notes of travel do. pithily stating three facts, which can scarcely be Mr. Rush's small talk is of a more dignified kind, reconciled with the idea of the extreme corruptas beseems an ambassador; mingling itself, not un-ness imputed to Pitt by his enemies : HE DISPENgracefully, with high diplomatic and political mat- SED FOR TWENTY YEARS THE FAVORS OF THE CROWN, ters. Altogether, therefore, his performance is LIVED WITHOUT OSTENTATION, AND DIED POOR." more than ordinarily pleasant and instructive. It We may hereafter shew that Lord Castlereagh has one tendency, which alone would suffice to was another conspicuous example of ill-appreciastamp a high value upon the work and that is, to ted merit, or el se of wrongly-lauded worthlessness. to make us think better both of the English people Our author visited a rare collection of curiosities, and the English government than we Americans belonging to a Mr. Weeks, who valued the whole are just now prone to do. For even in the ad- at 400,000 pounds. Its wonders of mechanism ministration of Lord Castlereagh, which has com- would be enough to astonish even this more wonmonly passed here for bigoted, arrogant, and, to-der-rife age-birds that not only sung, but hopt wards America as towards Ireland, greedy of all unfair advantages,-Mr. Rush plainly shows us a courtesy, liberality, and fair dealing almost equal to what are now to be looked for in Baring and Peel, or in their yet more liberal opponents, Macaulay and Lord John Russell. This, however, is but the general effect of making nations acquainted with each other: we might indeed say, of making men acquainted with each other. For in nineteen cases out of twenty, better liking comes from better acquaintance. Through the intercourse, formal and informal, of Mr. Rush and the British ministers, there runs much of that spirit of straightforwardness which, it may be hoped, is now getting to be a fixed characteristic of diplomacy. And if it was so with Castlereagh and Vansittart, Lord Bexley,) whom Tom Moore has so unsparingly transfixed with the arrows of his satire, and doomed to a bad notoriety, how much more is to be hoped from the wise and temperate statesmanship which now rules the councils of England! There is to be discerned, even in the distant days of 1818, when the absurdity of war had not impressed itself upon the common sense of mankind half so vividly as now, a great deal of that open, humane, and forbearing temper between negociators, which, now pervading nations, promises far more than legions or armadas, to keep the peace of the world. from stick to stick in their cages; mice, of pearl, that could run about nimbly; human figures of full size, playing on musical instruments, in full band;" all, as Mr. Rush gravely adds, without "a particle of life in them." There were silver swans swimming in water, serpents winding themselves on trees, &c. Mr. Weeks had prepared his museum for the Chinese market: but the exclusiveness of the Celestials had kept him out, and he was in despair of success. However," said he, "one of these days England will oblige China to receive her wares, by making her feel the strong arm of her power." A remarkable prediction, which in three and twenty years we have seen verified. Mr. Rush declares that he wrote it down in Weeks' own words, in 1819. 66 It is curious, that while many able and conscientious men in this country were heaping censure upon General Jackson for his execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister,-and mainly, because it violated the Law of Nations, and gave England a cause of war against us-the British ministry were acklowledging among themselves, and declaring in Parliament, that they could not complain of it, since those two men had put themselves out of their country's protection, by going into a foreign territory, and intermeddling in a foreign quarrel. The English Press, and the opposition speakers in the House of Commons, made fierce assaults upon Ministers for The questionableness of all History has been a taking such ground: but Ministers persisted in it, frequent subject of sneering, or of regret and no and the nation sustained them, as did the general part of History is more clouded with doubts, than opinion of other nations. Mr. Canning the part in which she hands down the characters of member) in one of his speeches, disti great personages. The Younger Pitt, for example-the right of Great Britain to cl how hard it is to assign him his true place in the It was the same principle of in Temple of Fame! Between the eulogy of Wilber- obliged our government to the massacre of Fanning * Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, horrid atrocities perpetra comprising incidents official and personal from 1819 to 1825. countrymen, who had inte Including negotiations on the Oregon question, and other unsettled questions between the United States and Great gle. The execution of Britain. By Richard Rush, Envoy Extraordinary, &c. however, brought us near gined by any common p 1 vol. 8 vo., pp. 640. |