And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away."
Mr Hunt seems, all through his poem, to imagine that he is writing a mere ordinary love-story, and this he is determined to do with all the light- ness and grace, an&jauntiness (to give him his own dear word), of which his muse is capable. Like all other novel writers, he is careful to give us a proper description of the persons of his hero and heroine. He intro- duces to us Prancesca, in a luxuriant paragraph which begins with
- ' Why need I tell of lovely lips and eyes,
A clipsome waist, and bosoms balmy rise,"
and takes occasion to make all judicious females fall in love with Paolo,
" So lightsomcly dropt in his lordly back."[1]
He describes the glittering pageant of the entrance of his hero with the enthusiasm of a city lady looking down at a dinner from the gallery at Guild- hall. Let us listen for a moment to the Cockney rapture :
" The heralds next appear in vests attired
Of stiffening gold with radiant colours fired,
And then thepoursuivants, who wait on these,
All dressed in painted richness to the knees."
And a little below :
"Their caps of velvet have a lightsome fit,
Each with a dancing feather sweeping it,
Tumbling its white against their short dark
hair;
But what is of the most accomplished air,
All wear memorials of their lady's love,
A ribbon, or a scarf, or silken glove ;
Some tied about their arm, some at the
breast,
Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's
crest.
A suitable attire the horses shew ;
Their golden bits keep wrangling as they go;
The bridles glance about with gold and gems ;
And the rich housing-cloths, above the hems
Which comb along the ground with golden
pegs
Are half of net, to shew the hinder legs.
Some of the cloths themselves are golden
threads,
With silk en woven, azure, green, or red ;
Some spotted on a ground of different hue,
As burning stars upon a cloth of blue,
Or purple smeurings with a velvet light
Rich from the glury yellow thickening
bright,
Or a spring green, powdered with April
posies,
Or flush vermilion, set with silver roses :
But all are wide and large, and with the wind,
When it comes fresh, go sweeping out behind.
With various earnestness the crowd admire
Horsemen and horse, the motion and the at-
tire.
Some watch, as they go by, the rider's faces
Looking composure, and their knightly
graces ;
The life, the carelessness, the sudden heed,
The body curving to the rearing steed ;
The patting hand, that best persuades the
check,
And makes the quarrel up with a proud neck ;
The thigh broad pressed, the spanning palm
upon it,
And the jerked feather scaling in the bon-
net.
Others the horses and their pride explore,
Their jauntincss behind and strength before."
As, in the subject and passion of his Poem, Mr Hunt has the desire to com- pete with Lord Byron, so here, in the more airy and external parts of his composition, he would fain enter the lists with the Mighty Minstrel. But, of a truth, Leigh Hunt's chivalrous rhymes are as unlike those of Walter Scott, as is the chivalry of a knighted cheesemonger to that of Archibald the Grim, or, if he would rather have it so, of Sir Philip Sydney. He draws his ideas of courtly splendour from the Lord Mayor's coach, and he dreams of tournaments, after having seen the al- dermen on horseback, with their furred gowns and silk stockings. We are in- deed altogether incapable of under- standing many parts of his description, for a good glossary of the Cockney di- alect is yet a desideratum in English literature, and it is only by a careful comparison of contexts that we can, in many passages, obtain any glimpse of meaning at all. What, "for instance, may be the English of swaling ? what, being interpreted, signify quoit-like steps ? what can exceed the affectation of such lines as these ?
" The softening breeze came smoothing "here
and there,
Boy-storied trees, and passion - plighted
spots.
The fervent sound
Of hoofs thick reckoning, and the wheels
moist round."
- ↑ Mr Hunt has borrowed the Cockneyism from himself:
"A back dropping in, an expansion of chest,
(For the God, you'll observe, like his statues
was drest)
FEAST OF THE POETS.