POETS AND POETRY.
"THE INDICATOR'S" VERSE.t "I DO not believe," wrote Leigh Hunt in the collection of his verses which Moxon printed so finely for the subscribers in 1832, "that other generations will take the trouble to rake for jewels in much nobler dust than mine. Posterity is too rich and idle." Hunt Was often wrong in his estimates, but never more so than in this. Who will claim for posterity-- • Modern Prone.: a Companion to Preach Studies. By A. My. Cambridge: at the University Press. 135e.1 t The Poetical Works of Leigh Hula. Edited by H. S. Milford. Oxford: at the University Press. 17s. net)
'we are posterity—that we are so overflowing with poetic milk and honey as not to have a kindness for what antiquity wrote ? We have made diligent search in nobler dust ; we, or rather Mr. Lucas, gleaned the least relics of Lamb's compassionate pen ; the very words of Keats's first drafts are numbered ; of Shelley, the " Esdaile notebook" of verses written between 1811 and 1813 is reputed to be hiding from us some few effusions yet, but that is all. And the friend of these three immortals, Hunt himself, for all his anxiety in his veteran mood to suppress the wild and whirling words of his youth, for all his caution in planning his own final collected edition as he awaited death, reckoned without Mr. Milford and the Oxford University Press.
That an set of editorial justice to Hunt as poet was due is perfectly clear. The "beautiful old man" who spent his sunset, as he fondly conceived, not without an occasional smile from Queen Victoria herself, and once certainly with a gift from her private purse, was not likely to treat fairly the revo- lutionary young man and his utterances of forty years ago. There were things to forgive and forget, and verses, even the most poetical of them bore, too often, painful associations ; and the campaign of northern reviewers, the cat-calls and broad grins had reduced Hunt's opinion of his powers in verse to the grouud. "The Nymphs," for example, a melodious passage of echoes from antique Greece, and perhaps the finest sustained poem that Hunt wrote, disappeared from the canon altogether. Even Shelley's admiration could not save it. In this state generally did Hunt leave the careless raptures of his reformist youth, and after his death matters grew worse with him. Interpreting the Byron squabbles and the Harold Skimpole scandal against him, critics condemned, editors patronized, and the impression of a feckless scribbler and a babbler of green fields was fostered. Neither contempt nor patronage in Hunt's case is excusable. We should remember Shelley's last voyage to the friend who in after years appeared to the chance visitor so radiant and Elysian.
Hunt's verse forms a solid enough volume. It is of many kinds ; its author was ever ready to put forth novelty, just us in the evenings with his inimical friends the Carlyles he talked surprisingly late and lasted surprisingly well. Of poetry in what he calls the "highest sense" he is not, and he seldom thought himself, representative, but we cannot better his own allegory of the rose and acacia, not frowned out of their sphere of grace and colour by the oak and pine. If one is to weigh only faults and ignore virtues, in the way that Mr. Blackwood's young men set about the Vale of Health sonnetteer and Examiner renegado, Leigh Hunt will come off poorly many a time. "Her taste for rural sights "—atrocious taste : "A clipsome waist "—have a care, Sir!: "But what ? The torch gone out ! So long too I See,"—is this George the Third ? One might fill a page with these doleful errors. But, a hundred years having passed, such things no longer stand out as the signal for an orgy of hatred against Hunt, his friends, his wife, his "unfortunate children." We may even see merits in the freedom Which he was rash enough to claim ; if the train of Bacchus had included Hunt, he could scarcely have left a livelier picture than this
. Bounding they come, and twirl, and thrust on high
Their thyrsuses, as they would rouse the sky ; And hurry here and there, in loosened bands, And trill above their heads their cymballed hands : Some, brawny males, that almost show from far Their forceful arms, cloudy and muscular ; Some, smoother females, who have nevertheless Strong limbs, and hands, to fling with and to press ; And shapes, which they can bend with heavenward glare, And tortuous wrists, and backward streaming hair . . ."
The vitality which kicked over the traces in Hunt's earlier work sufficed to distinguish his long career as a verse writer. He tried many subjects, many modes, and whether story or sonnet, satire or song, each new running of his vein shows him quick and gay, delighting and delighted, confusing in his personal way his glorifications of men and scenes with their actualities. The swift appreciation which is his mark as critic gives us from his pen a remarkable quantity of translated verse, most vividly reset ; "This," he seems saying in all his rhy-mings, "is perfect pleasure."
"Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator— Hunt, your best title yet is INDICATOR."
EDMUND BLUNDEN.
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