Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/204

 And in the heaven that clear obscure, So softly dark, and darkly pure, Which follows the decline of day, As twilight melts beneath the moon away."

Mr Hunt seems, all through his poem, to imagine that he is writing a mere ordinary love-story, and this he is determined to do with all the lightness and grace, and jauntiness (to give him his own dear word), of which his muse is capable. Like all other novel writers, he is careful to give us a proper description of the persons of his hero and heroine. He introduces to us Francesca, in a luxuriant paragraph which begins with

and takes occasion to make all judicious females fall in love with Paolo,

He describes the glittering pageant of the entrance of his hero with the enthusiasm of a city lady looking down at a dinner from the gallery at Guildhall. Let us listen for a moment to the Cockney rapture:

And a little below:

As, in the subject and passion of his Poem, Mr Hunt has the desire to compete with Lord Byron, so here, in the more airy and external parts of his composition, he would fain enter the lists with the Mighty Minstrel. But, of a truth, Leigh Hunt's chivalrous rhymes are as unlike those of Walter Scott, as is the chivalry of a knighted cheesemonger to that of Archibald the Grim, or, if he would rather have it so, of Sir Philip Sydney. He draws his ideas of courtly splendour from the Lord Mayor's coach, and he dreams of tournaments, after having seen the aldermen on horseback, with their furred gowns and silk stockings. We are indeed altogether incapable of understanding many parts of his description, for a good glossary of the Cockney dialect is yet a desideratum in English literature, and it is only by a careful comparison of contexts that we can, in many passages, obtain any glimpse of meaning at all. What, for instance, may be the English of swaling? what, being interpreted, signify quoit-like steps? what can exceed the affectation of such lines as these?

Was it really so, that Mr Hunt could find no nobler image to represent the quick yet regular motion of horse, than that of an apprentice counting bank notes on his fingers' ends.

But, in truth, we have no inclination