udders. He is the most suburban of poets. He died, as might have been prophesied, within a few hours saunter of the spot where he was born, and without having been once beyond the well-fenced meadows of his microcosm. Suppose for a moment, Leight Hunt at sea—or on the summit of Mount Blanc! It is impossible. No. Hampstead was the only place for him.
"With farmy fields in front and sloping green."
Only hear how he revels in the morning 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 mansions through,
And cottaged vales with pillowy fields beyond,
And clump of darkening pines, and prospects 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 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.
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 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 Trojans;
And thrice did the Ajaces, springy strength'd.
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 into the press?"
In another place, Hunt makes Homer call a fountain "clear and crisp," 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 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, 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-swelling grace,
A crook's 'twixt her bosom, and crosses her face,—
