Page:Hero and Leander - Marlowe and Chapman (1821).pdf/58

mentally rejecting in his rough draught, the full-blown flower of Musæus, and brooding over, and developing anew the primitive seed.—In so doing some of the antique air necessarily faded, but this loss is more than compensated to the genuine admirers of the spirit in which our old dramas are written, by the additional force with which all the circumstances are brought home to our modern sympathies. Musæus is more classical—Hunt more romantic.—The present writer neither admires the political doctrines of Mr. Hunt, or the occasional flippancy which disfigure his best works, both prose and verse:—but it is impossible for a candid critic not to perceive the simplicity and truth of his "Hero and Leander.". Not that it is free from one or two lines and phrases, which afflict the sensitive mind like a vulgar flourish introduced into Arne's "Water parted from the Sea," or "This Cold Flinty Heart" in Cymon, but they are so immediately redeemed, that they are, as it were, perforce, forgiven and forgotten. I cannot resist a few specimens; the more especially as bring-