udders. He is the most suburban of
poets. He died, as might have been prophesied, within a lew hours saunter of the spot where he was born, and without having been once beyond the well-tViu-ed meadows of his micro- cosm. Suppose for a moment, I.eiuli Hunt at sea or on the summit of Mount Blanc ! It is impossible. No. liampstead was the only place for him.
"With farmy fields in front and sloping green."
Only hear how he revels in the morn- ing before breakfast, when out on an adventurous constitutional stroll.
Then northward what a range, with heath
and pond.
Nature's own ground ; woods that let man-
sions through,
And cottaged vales with pillowy fields be-
yond,
And clump of darkening pines, and pros-
pects blue,
And that clear path through all, where daily
meet
Cool cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and morn-
elastic feet.
Mr Hunt is the only poet who has considered the external world simply as the " country," in contradiction to the town fields in place of squares, lanes vice streets, and trees as lieuten- ants of houses. That fine line of Campbell's,
" And look on nature with a poet's eye,"
must, to be applicable to him, be changed into,
" Look on the country with a cockney's eye."
It is true, that on one occasion Mr Hunt (see a former quotation) talks of having gone up in a balloon but there is something Cockneyish even in that object with all its beauty and one thinks of the Aeronaut after his flight, returning to town in a post-chaise, with the shrivelled globe bundled on the roof.
III. His love of the fine imagination of the Greeks.
A man who could ask Jupiter if his tea was sweetened to his mind, must have a truly Greekish imagination of his own no doubt and pray, where did Mr Hunt find that Hebe was a married lady with six children ? What does that great orthographist, Lindley Murray, think of spelling Apollo witn a final r, which Mr Hunt is in duty bound to do when he pronounces him Apollar? But Mr Hunt used to read Homer, and to translate choice passages from the Iliad, on which Pope and Cowper had wrought in vain.
Thrice did great Hector drag him by the feet
Backward, and loudly shouted to the Tro-
jans;
And thrice did the Ajaces, springy -trenguYd.
Thrust him away ; yet still he kept the
ground.
Sure of his strength ; and now and then
rushed on
Into the thick, and now and then stood still.
Shouting great shouts; and not an inch
gave he.
When Iris invites Achilles to go to the rescue of the body of Patrocles, the son of Thetis replies to her, as if he were speaking to our old friend Mr Rees, in Paternoster-row, with a MS. for publication in his pocket.
" But how am I to go Mo tfte prcu?"
In another place, Hunt makes Ho- mer call a fountain " clear and cria/i," which had he ever done, Apollo would have shot him instantly dead. There is something to us quite shocking in the idea of Hunt translating Homer and his executors have much to an- swer for in having made the fact pub- lic.
The following description, though very conceited and passionless, seems to us the best thing the late Mr Hunt ever did " in the poetical line." But instead of breathing " of the fine ima- gination of the Greeks," it is nothing more than a copy in words of a pic- ture in oil. Mr Hunt used to be a great lounger in picture-dealer's shops, and was a sad bore among the artists, who must feel much relieved by his death. Wnenever you meet with a vivid image in his verses, you are sure that it is taken from a picture. He is speaking of Polyphemus descending by night,
To walk in his anguish about the green
places,
And see where his mistress lay dreaming of
Acis.
I fancy him now, coming just where she
sleeps ;
He parts the close hawthorns, and hushes,
and creeps;
The moon slips from under the dark clouds,
and throws
A light, through the leaves, on her smil-
ing repose.
There, there she lies, bower 'd ; a slope for
her bed ;
One branch, like a hand, reaches over her
head;
Half naked, half shrinking, with side-swel-
ling grace,
A crook's 'twixt her bosom, and crosses her
face,.