And look! there's a balloon love!
Round and bright as the moon above.
Now we loosen-now-take care;
What a spring from earth was there!
Like an angel mounting fierce,
We have shot the night with a pierce ;
And the moon, with slant-up beam,
Makes our starting faces gleam.
Lovers below will stare at the sight,
And talk of the double moon last night.
Mr Hunt's notions of sociality are very
moderate ones indeed; and we know
not what will be thought of them by
those whom he calls "the once cheer-

ful gentry of this war and moneyinjured land." Reader, if thou art an honest, stout county squire, what thinkst thou of the following debauch of two Cockney's, Hunt and Hazlitt. Then tea made by one, who although my ; wife she be,

If Jove were to drink it, would soon be his Hebe,

Then silence a little, a creeping twilight, Then an egg for your supper with lettuces white,

And a moon and friend's arm to go home

with at night.

In this passage we have "the love of sociality, of the country and of the fine imagination of the Greeks," all in one. What does Sir John Swinburne think of the Phidian Jove at his fourth cup of tea, putting his spoon across it, or fairly turning the cup upside down, in imitation of the custom of Cockaigne, to ensure himself against the fifth dilution? Then, think of the delicacy of the compliment paid to the lady who pours out the gun-powder! Jupiter drinking tea at Hampstead with Mr and Mrs Hunt, and Mr Hazlitt!

“Cedite Romani Scriptores Cedite Graii.” The affable arch-angel, supping with Adam and Eve in Paradise, is nothing to the Father of Gods and Men eating muffins with the Editor of a Sunday newspaper. There, Mr Benjamin Haydon, is a grand historical subject for your pencil. Shut yourself up again for seven years in sublime solitude, and Raphael and Michael Angelo are no more. One is at a loss to know if Jupiter staid supper. Short commons for a god who, in days of yore, went to sleep on Juno's bosom, full of nectar and ambrosia

An egg for his supper with lettuces white! Then think of letting Jove decamp, without so much as once offering him a bed-leaning on the arm of Mr Wil

Who ever supposed that lips were made only to chat to? Their ordinary use is to chat with-and really all their other little agreeable offices are too universally acknowledged to allow Leigh Hunt to claim the honour of discovery.

Under the head of "Love of Sociality" we now make room for only one passage more from an epistle to Charles Lamb, who has for many years past been in the very reprehensible habit of allowing Mr Hunt and Mr Hazlitt to suck his brains, at teadrinkings and select suppers, to steal from him his ingenious fancies, and to send them out into the world woform. Mr Coleridge, too, used to be fully bedizened in the Cockney uniplundered in this way-and one evening of his fine, rich, overflowing monologue would amply furnish out a lecture on poetry, or any thing else, at the Surrey Institution. Let that simpleminded man of genius, Charles Lamb, beware of such ungrateful plunderers -nor allow himself to be flattered by their magnificent compliments. You'll guess why I can't see the snowcovered streets,

Without thinking of you and your visiting feats!

When you call to remembrance how you

and one more, When I wanted it most, used to knock at my door.

For when the sad winds told us rain would

come down,

Or snow upon snow fairly clogged up the town,

And dun yellow fogs brooded over it's white, So that scarcely a being was seen towards night,

Then, then said the lady yclept near and dear! "Now mind what I tell you,the L.'s will be here."

So I poked up the flame, and she got out the tea!

And down we both sat, as prepared as could

be!

5

And there, sure as fate, came the knock of you two,

Then the lanthorn, the laugh, and the "Well, how d'ye do ?"

Then your palm tow'rds the fire, and your face turned to me,

And shawls and great-coats being-where they should be,

And due "never saw's" being paid to the weather,

We cherished our knees, and sat sipping together,

And leaving the world to the fogs and the fighters,

Discussed the pretensions of all sorts of writers.

There is too much reason to believe, that this everlasting tea-drinking was the chief cause of Leigh Hunt's death. The truth is, that he had for many years been sipping imitation-tea, a pleasant but deleterious preparation more pernicious by far than the very worst port; and there can be little doubt, that if he had drunk about a bottle of black-strap in the fortnight, and forsworn thin potations altogether, he might have been alive, and perhaps writing a sonnet at this very

moment.

II. His love of the Country. Mr Hunt informs us, that of all the poets of the present day he was the fondest of rural scenes.

O Spirit, O muse of mine,

Frank, and quick-dimpled to all social glee,
And yet most sylvan of the earnest Nine,
Who on the fountain-shedding hill,
Leaning about among the clumpy bays
Look at the clear Apollo while he plays ;-
Take me, now, now, and let me stand
On some such lovely land,
Where I may feel me, as I please,
In dells among the trees,

Or on some outward slope, with ruffling hair,
Be level with the air;

For a new smiling sense has shot down through me,

And from the clouds, like stars, bright eyes are beckoning to me.

Having got into this situation, Mr Hunt did not long for his wonted cup of tea, but for "poetic women" "To have their fill of pipes and leafy playing."

What vast ideas of tobacco does "fill of pipes" awaken! and what a game at romps is signified by "leafy playing" after this violent exertion the poet and his nymphs lie down to sleep. There lie they, lulled by little whiffling tones Of rills among the stones,

Or by the rounder murmur, glib and flush,
Of the escaping gush,
VOL. VI.

That laughs and tumbles, like a conscious thing,

For joy of all its future travelling.
The lizard circuits them; and his grave will
The frog, with reckoning leap, enjoys apart,
Till now and then the woodcock frights his
heart

With brushing down to dip his dainty bill.

How beautifully he describes the
Hampstead clouds of heaven.
And lo, there issued from beside the trees,
Through the blue air, a most delicious sight,
A troop of clouds, rich, separate, three parts
white,

As beautiful as pigeons that one sees
Round a glad homestead reeling at their ease,
But large, and slowly; and what made the
sight

Such as I say, was not that piled white,
Nor their more rosy backs, nor forward press
Like sails, nor yet their surfy massiveness
Light in it's plenitude, like racks of snow.

These are singing clouds, and ought to be introduced on the stage. As they stooped them near, Lo, I could hear How the smooth silver clouds, lasping with

care,

Make a bland music to the fawning air,
Filling with such a roundly-slipping tune
The hollow of the great attentive noon,
That the tall sky seemed touched; and all
the trees

Thrilled with the coming harmonies;
And the fair waters looked as if they lay
Their cheek against the sound, and so went
kissed away.

But it is needless to enter at greater length into Mr Hunt's "love of the country," for it all hangs on one great principle-every grove has its nymph, and that is enough for the author of the story of Rimini.

You finer people of the earth,

Nymphs of all names, and woodland Geni

uses,

I see you, here and there, among the trees, Shrouded in noon-day respite of your mirth : This hum in air, which the still ear perceives, Is your unquarrelling voice among the leaves; And now I find, whose are the laughs and stirrings

That make the delicate birds dart so in whisks and whirrings.

It is much to be regretted, that the deceased bard's rural life was so limit

ed and local. He had no other notion of that sublime expression, “sub Dio," than merely "out of doors." One always thinks of Leigh Hunt, on his rural excursions to and from Hampstead, in a great-coat or spencer, clogs over his shoes, and with an umbrella in his hand. He is always talking of lanes, and styles, and hedgerows, and clumps of trees, and cows with large

K

Cool cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and mornelastic 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 lieutenants 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.

HII. 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 with 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 Trajans;

And thrice did the Ajaces, springy-strength'd, Thrust him away; yet still he kept the Sure of his strength; and now and then ground,

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 into the press ?"

In another place, Hunt makes Howhich had he ever done, Apollo would mer call a fountain" clear and crisp," is something to us quite shocking in have shot him instantly dead. There the idea of Hunt translating Homerand his executors have much to answer for in having made the fact public.

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 imagination of the Greeks," it is nothing more than a copy in words of a picture 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. Whenever 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 smiling repose.

There,

One

Half

there she lies, bower'd ;-a slope for her bed;

branch, like a hand, reaches over her

head;

naked, half shrinking, with side-swelling grace,

A crook's 'twixt her bosom, and crosses her face,

-

So much for our deceased friend's "love of sociality, the country, and the fine imagination of the Greeks." May we add a few specimens of

IV. His love of himself. He gets Mrs L. H. to model a bust of him, and during the operation, he talks of becoming

"Worthier of Apollo's bough." What is to be thought of a man writing a triumphal sonnet on his own bust, and publishing it-and what if that man be, at the best, but a small poetaster and newsmonger. Then follows a sonnet to John Keats,

'Tis well you think me truly one of those. Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things, &c.

And then again comes another sonnet on receiving a crown of ivy from the same."

A crown of ivy!-I submit my head

pius, and ever and anon coquetting with himself in the magic mirror.. No doubt, he rung the bell for the ladies, and the children, and the servants, and probably sent out for his When favourite "washerwoman." he dressed for dinner, did the ivy wreath still continue to deck his regal temples? Did he sip tea in it? Play a rubber at whist? And finally, did he go to bed in it—and, if so, did he shroud its glories in a night-cap, or did he lay his head on the pillow like Bacchus by the side of Ariadne? All these little interesting circumstantialities are, no doubt, mentioned in his autobiography.

But one sonnet-two sonnets to John Keats, do not suffice-and we have a third " on the same." It is a lofty feeling, yet a kind, Thus to be topped with leaves; to have à of honour-shaded thought—an influence As from great nature's fingers, and be twined

sense

With her old, sacred, verdurous ivy-bind, As though she hallowed with that sylvan fence,

A head that bows to her benevolence, Midst pomp of fancied trumpets in the wind!!!!

'Tis what's within us crowned.

There is a pair of blockheads for

true,

This sonnet presents to us a very laughable picture, which, spite of Mr Hunt's decease, we hope there can be no great harm in enjoying. Mr John Keats was, we believe, at this time, a young apothecary, and if, instead of crowning poor Mr Hunt with ivy, he had clapped a blister upon his head, he would have acted in a way more suitable to his profession. Such an opportunity probably never occurred again. Well-behold the Cockney-strutting about the room, for we hope there was no out of doors" exposure, with his ivy-crown, dressing gown, yellow breeches, and red slippers-followed, in all his movements by young Escula

to dress up Leigh Hunt in this absurd fashion, than he had to tar and feather him-and we do not doubt, that if Leigh Hunt had ever had the misfortune to have been tarred and feathered, he would have written a sonnet on his plumification, and described himself as a Bird of Paradise.

From John Keats the transition is

not difficult to John Hamilton Reynolds-for he too had written lines on the story of Rimini-though by nature fit for far other occupation-and accordingly Mr Hunt returns him sonnet for sonnet. In it, Mr Reynolds, clever man as he is, is made to look very like a ninny.

TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS, On his Lines upon the Story of Rimini. Reynolds, whose Muse, from out thy gentle embraces,

Holding a little crisp and dewy flower, Where many fine-eyed Friendships and glad Came to me in my close-entwined bower,

Graces,

Parting the boughs, have looked in with like faces, And thanked the song which had sufficient

power

"The force of nature could no farther go→→ To make one Fool, she joined the other two."

Two more sonnets follow on the same subject, and Mr Hunt, we are told, a short time before his death, had the lock of Milton's hair put into a broach, in the figure of a naked Eve, and wore it, and the Mother of Mankind, on the frill of his shirt.

This fashion of firing off sonnets at each other was prevalent in the metropolis a short time since among the bardlings, and was even more annoying heard them cracking off in the lobbies than the detonating balls. We have of the Theatres, and several exploded close to our ear one morning in Sir John Leicester's gallery. Like other nuisances of the kind, they are how laughed down; and, indeed, after Leigh Hunt's death, who was at the top of the fashion, it dwindled quite away, though sometimes even yet a stray sonneteer is to be found cantering along on his velocipede.

In our next we hope to publish "Luctus" on the death of Mr Hunt, by Webb, Keats, and Co.-and also a funeral oration, by Mr Hazlitt, We ourselves intend to write his epitaph.

Z.

MR EDITOR, I HAVE read with some sorrow, and more shame, your correspondent's proposal to adorn Edinburgh with a Greek Temple. Is he serious? or does he write it as a satire upon Scottish invention? and is it true, that no living man is capable of conceiving a suitable structure to commemorate the glories of Scotland? That your correspondent shews good taste in admiring the Parthenon, who would deny-but he is unwise in recommending its restoration by his countrymen. The use to be made of ancient works, of the majestic remains of Grecian greatness, is not to transfer them in the gross into marble or stone, to carry them off, pillar and rafter, like the fabled church of Loretto,-but to contemplate and admire them, to elevate the mind and kindle a fire which may excite an emulation of their glories. But your correspondent thinks the sun of Scottish invention has sunk or has never risen: therefore, says he, let us not seek to create the new, but re

store the old; let us make works which exercise the memory in recollections of Athens or Rome, rather than aspire after an hazardous reputation for originality. So thought the prudent-the calculating-the painstak ing people of America, and what have they done, and what are they daily doing? Your correspondent knows this-you cannot climb an eminence in the United States but you see Spartas, Thebes's, and Athens's on all sides, hills abound with classic names-here is Ethos-there is Athos, Parnassus is near, and beyond it arises mount Pelion, the very hill you have climbed is the "Calicolone on the Simio's side."

"And what was Goose Creek once, is Tyber

now."

Now all this is harmless enough, but what does it shew-all but an original spirit. In the same taste people may-and many people do baptize their children. I have seen Lucius Junius O'Flanagan, which is a so