and accordingly we have now a posthumous dedication, beginning, "My dear Sir John." Oh! what a falling off is there! Why, had the Cockney lived a few years longer, he might have descended into a plain, paltry "My dear Sir;" and then there would have been an end of all his greatness. From "My dear Lord," the ascent would have been easy to "My dear Duke;" thence to "My dear Regent;" and when earthly potentate could not satisfy the bard's ambition, he might have dedicated a half-guinea volume to Pan or Apollo.
The main features of this posthumous volume are, we are told, "a love of sociality, of the country, and of the fine imagination of the Greeks;" and it is on that account dedicated to Sir John Swinburne, Bart. whom "a rational piety and a manly patriotism does not hinder from putting the Phidian Jupiter over his organ and flowers at the end of his room." This is a very mystical sentence. Rational piety and manly patriotism, as far as we can see, need no more hinder Sir John Swinburne from doing that, than from wearing buckskin-breeches and boots when he takes a morning ride, or from having a turkey-carpet in his drawing-room. But both rational piety and manly patriotism ought, in our opinion, to prevent Sir John Swinburne from admiring either the story of Rimini or the Examiner newspaper; for the first is an affected piece of immorality, and the second has for twelve years past been endeavouring to sap the foundations of all social institutions, and of the Christian religion. Sir John Swinburne is, we believe, a highly respectable person, and must hate and despise licentiousness, sedition, and impiety. A dedication to him, by a writer who so largely dealt in all of these as the late Leigh Hunt, is a gross public insult, not to himself alone, but to the country-gentlemen of England.
Let us see in what way the deceased Cockney exhibits his love of sociality—of the country—and of the fine imagination of the Greeks.
I. His love of sociality.
Few traits of this amiable disposition are discernible in the chief poem of this collection, the Nymphs. On the contrary, Mr Hunt seems desirous to have these fair ladies entirely to himself, and figures away in the character of the Grand Signor. The following is a sketch of part of his seraglio.
Most exquisite it was indeed to see
How those blithe damsels guided variously,
Before, behind, beside. Some forward stood
As in well-managed chariots, or pursued
Their trusting way as in self-moving ones;
And some sat up, or as in tilted chair
With silver back seemed slumbering through the air,
Or leaned their cheek against a pillowy place
As if upon their smiling, sleepy face
They felt the air, or heard aerial tunes.
Some were like maids who sit to wash their feet
On rounded banks beside a rivulet;
Some sat in shade beneath a curving jut
As at a small hill's foot;
And some behind upon a sunny mound
With twinkling eyes. Another only shewed
On the far side a foot and leg, that glowed
Under the cloud; a sweeping back another,
Turning her from us like a suckling mother;
She next, a side, lifting her arms to tie
Her locks into a flowing knot; and she
That followed her, a smooth down-arching thigh
Tapering with tremulous mass internally.
Others lay partly sunk, as if in bed,
Shewing a white raised bosom and dark head,
And dropping out an arm.
Several scores more of King Leigh the First's Beauties are described by the pencil of his enamoured majesty—and at the conclusion we are told by him that
Every lady bowed
A little from its side without a word.
And swept my lids with breathless lips serene,
At Alan's month was stooped to by a Queen.
But we, "who are ignorant of all noble theories," must not presume to guess at the meaning of these free nymphs, or at the construction which Mr Hunt may have put on their condescensions.
The love of sociality, however, breaks out, at page 40, in a poem entitled Fancy's Party. Mr Hunt and a few choice spirits are sipping tea in his parlour—and "cherishing their knees" at the fire, as he elsewhere snugly says—when it would appear that the Harlequin of Sadler's Wells, who we believe was an intimate friend of Leigh's, strikes the chimney-piece with his sword,
And hey, what's this? the walls, look,
Are wrinkling as a skin does;
And now they are bent
To a silken tent,
And there are chrystal windows;
