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 facts 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 cheerful gentry of this war and money-injured 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 William Hazlitt—and perhaps obliged, after all, to put up for the night at Old Mother Red-Cap's! Mr Hunt then exultingly exclaims, soon as he has got the Monarch of Olympus and the Lecturer at the Surrey Institution out of his house,
Now this I can pasting a few devout hours.
Beseeming a world that has friendship and flowers,
That has lips also, made for still more than to chat to,
And if it has rain, has a rainbow for that too!
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 tea-drinkings and select suppers, to steal from him his ingenious fancies, and to send them out into the world wofully bedizened in the Cockney uniform. Mr Coleridge, too, used to be plundered 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 simple-minded 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 snow-covered 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 at could be!
