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
"Why need I tell of lovely lips and eyes,
A clipsome waist, and bosoms balmy rise,"
and takes occasion to make all judicious females fall in love with Paolo,
"So lightsomely dropt in his lordly back."[1]
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:
"The heralds next appear in vests attired
Of stiffening gold with radiant colours fired,
And then the poursuivants, who wait on these,
All dressed in painted richness to the knees."
And a little below:
"Their caps of velvet have a lightsome fit,
Each with a dancing feather sweeping it,
Tumbling its white against their short dark hair;
But what is of the most accomplished air,
All wear memorials of their lady's love,
A ribbon, or a scarf, or silken glove;
Some tied about their arm, some at the breast,
Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest.
A suitable attire the horses shew;
Their golden bits keep wrangling as they go;
The bridles glance about with gold and gems;
And the rich housing-cloths, above the hems
Which comb along the ground with golden pegs
Are half of net, to shew the hinder legs.
Some of the cloths themselves are golden threads,
With silk en woven, azure, green, or red;
Some spotted on a ground of different hue,
As burning stars upon a cloth of blue,—
Or purple smearings with a velvet light
Rich from the glary yellow thickening bright,—
Or a spring green, powdered with April posies,—
Or flush vermilion, set with silver roses:
But all are wide and large, and with the wind,
When it comes fresh, go sweeping out behind.
With various earnestness the crowd admire
Horsemen and horse, the motion and the attire.
Some watch, as they go by, the rider's faces
Looking composure, and their knightly graces;
The life, the carelessness, the sudden heed,
The body curving to the rearing steed;
The patting hand, that best persuades the check,
And makes the quarrel up with a proud neck;
The thigh broad pressed, the spanning palm upon it,
And the jerked feather swaling in the bonnet.
Others the horses and their pride explore,
Their jauntiness behind and strength before."
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?
"The softening breeze came smoothing here and there,—
Boy-storied trees, and passion-plighted spots.—
The fervent sound
Of hoofs thick reckoning, and the wheels moist round."
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
- ↑ Mr Hunt has borrowed the Cockneyism from himself: "A back dropping in, an expansion of chest,
(For the God, you'll observe, like his statues was drest)Feast of the Poets.
