style is still too diffuse, and his range too limited, the present volume is greatly less objectionable on these grounds than the former. It has also less of the peculiarities of the Lake School; and, in particular, is honourably distinguished from the productions of its founders, by being quite free from the paltry spite and fanatical reprobation with which, like other fierce and narrow-minded sectaries, they think it necessary to abuse all whose tastes or opinions are not exactly conformable to their own. There is no shadow of this ludicrous insolence in the work before us; in consequence of which, we think it extremely likely, that he will be execrated and reviled, on the first good opportunity, by his late kind masters.

ART. XI. The Story of Rimini, a Poem. By LEIGH HUNT. pp. 111. London, Murray, 1816.

THERE

HERE is a great deal of genuine poetry in this little volume; and poetry, too, of a very peculiar and original character. It reminds us, in many respects, of that pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French models and French rules of criticism were known in this country, and to which we are delighted to see there is now so general a disposition to recur. Yet its more immediate prototypes, perhaps, are to be looked for rather in Italy than in England: at least, if it be copied from any thing English, it is from something much older than Shakespeare; and it unquestionably bears a still stronger resemblance to Chaucer than to his immediate followers in Italy. The same fresh, lively and artless pictures of external objects,-the same profusion of gorgeous but redundant and needless description,-the same familiarity and even homeliness of diction-and, above all, the same simplicity and directness in representing actions and passions in colours true to nature, but without any apparent attention to their effect, or any ostentation, or even visible impression as to their moral operation or tendency. The great distinction between the modern poets and their predecessors, is, that the latter painted more from the eye and less from the mind than the former. They described things and actions as they saw them, without expressing, or at any rate without dwelling on the deep-seated emotions from which the objects derived their interest, or the actions their character. The moderns, on the contrary, have brought these most prominently forward, and explained and enlarged upon them perhaps at excessive length. Mr Hunt, in

the piece before us, has followed the antient school; and though he has necessarily gone something beyond the naked notices that would have suited the age of Chaucer, he has kept himself far more to the delineation of visible, physical realities, than any other modern poet on such a subject.

Though he has chosen, however, to write in this style, and has done so very successfully, we are not by any means of opinion, that he either writes or appears to write it as naturally as those by whom it was first adopted; on the contrary, we think there is a good deal of affectation in his homeliness, directness, and rambling descriptions. He visibly gives himself airs of familiarity, and mixes up flippant, and even cant phrases, with passages that bear, upon the whole, the marks of considerable labour and study. In general, however, he is very successful in his attempts at facility, and has unquestionably produced a little poem of great grace and spirit, and, in many passages and many particulars, of infinite beauty and delicacy.

In the subject he has selected, he has ventured indeed upon sacred ground; but he has not profaned it. The passage in Dante, on which the story of Rimini is founded, remains unimpaired by the English version, and has even received a new interest from it. The undertaking must be allowed to have been one of great nicety. An imitation of the manner of Dante was an impossibility. That extraordinary author collects all his force into a single blow: His sentiments derive an obscure grandeur from their being only half expressed; and therefore, a detailed narrative of this kind, a description of particular circumstances. done upon this ponderous principle, an enumeration of incidents leading to a catastrophe, with all the pith and conclusiveness of the catastrophe itself, would be intolerable. Mr Hunt has arrived at his end by varying his means; and the effect of his poem coincides with that of the original passage, mainly, because the spirit in which it is written is quite different. With the personages in Dante, all is over before the reader is introduced to them; their doom is fixed;-and his style is as peremptory and irrevocable as their fate. But the lovers, whose memory the muse of the Italian poet had consecrated in the other world, are here restored to earth, with the graces and the sentiments that became them in their lifetime. Mr Hunt, in accompanying them to its fatal close, has mingled every tint of many-coloured life in the tissue of their story--blending tears with smiles, the dancing of the spirits with sad forebouings, the intoxication of hope with bitter disappointment, youth with age, life and death together. He has united something of the voluptuous pathos of Boccacio with Ariosto's laughing graces. His

court dresses, and gala processions he has borrowed from Watteau. His sunshine and his flowers are his own! He himself has explained the design of his poem in the Preface.

The following story is founded on a passage in Dante, the substance of which is contained in the concluding paragraph of the second canto. For the rest of the incidents, generally speaking, the praise or blame remains with myself. The passage in questionthe episode of Paulo and Francesca-has long been admired by the readers of Italian poetry, and is indeed the most cordial and refreshing one in the whole of that singular poem, the Inferno, which some call a satire, and some an epic, and which, I confess, has always appeared to me a kind of sublime night-mare. We even lose sight of the place, in which the saturnine poet, according to his summary way of disposing both of friends and enemies, has thought proper to put the sufferers; and see the whole melancholy absurdity of his theology, in spite of itself, falling to nothing before one genuine impulse of the affections.

The interest of the passage is greatly increased by its being founded on acknowledged matter of fact. Even the particular circumstance which Dante describes as having hastened the fall of the lovers the perusal of Launcelot of the Lake-is most likely a true anecdote; for he himself, not long after the event, was living at the court of Guido Novello da Polenta, the heroine's father; and indeed the very circumstance of his having related it at all, considering its nature, is a warrant of its authenticity.

The commentators differ in their accounts of the rest of the story: but all agree that the lady was in some measure beguiled into the match with the elder Malatesta ;-Boccacio says, by being shown the younger brother once as he passed over a square, and told that that was her intended husband. I have accordingly turned this artifice to account, though in a different manner. I have also omitted the lameness attributed to the husband; and of two different names, by which he is called, Giovanni and Launcelot, have chosen the former, as not interfering with the hero's appellation, whose story the lovers were reading.

The Italians have been very fond of this little piece of private history, and I used to wonder that I could meet with it in none of the books of novels, for which they have been so famous; till I reflected that it was, perhaps, owing to the nature of the books them. selves, which such a story might have been no means of recommending. The historians of Ravenna, however, have taken care to record it; and, besides Dante's episode, it is alluded to by Petrarch and by Tassoni. The former mentions the lovers among his examples of calamitous passion, in the Trionfo d'Amore, cap. 3.Tassoni, in his tragi-comic war, introduces Paulo Malatesta, as leading the troops of Rimini, and paints him in a very lively manner, as contemplating, while he rides, a golden sword-chain which Fran cesca had given him, and which he addresses with melancholy en

thusiasm, as he goes.

and canto 7. st. 29, &c.

See the Secchia Rapita, canto 5. st. 43, &c.;

The poem opens with the following passage of superb description

• The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May

Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay.
A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen,
Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green;
For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light,
And there's a crystal clearness all about;
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out;
A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze;
The smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees;
And when you listen, you may hear a coil
Of bubbling springs about the grassy soil;
And all the scene, in short-sky, earth, and sea,
Breathes like a bright-eyed face, that laughs out openly
'Tis nature, full of spirits, waked and springing:-
The birds to the delicious time are singing,
Darting with freaks and snatches up and down,
Where the light woods go seaward from the town;
While happy faces, striking through the green
Of leafy roads, at every turn are seen;
And the far ships, lifting their sails of white
Like joyful hands, come up with scattery light,
Come gleaming up, true to the wished-for day,
And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay,
Already in the streets the stir grows loud,
Of expectation and a bustling crowd.

With feet and voice the gathering hum contends,
The deep talk heaves, the ready laugh ascends
Callings, and clapping doors, and curs unite,
And shouts from mere exuberance of delight,
And armed bands, making important way,
Gallant and grave, the lords of holiday,

And nodding neighbours, greeting as they run,
And pilgrims, chanting in the morning sun.'

Such is the manner in which the business of the day is ushered in. The rest of the first canto is taken up in describing the preparations for receiving the bridegroom, the processions of knights that precede his expected arrival; the dresses, &c.There is something in all this part of the poem which gives back the sensation of the scene and the occasion;a glancing eye, a busy ear, great bustle and gaiety, and, where it is required, great grace of description. Perhaps the subject is too VOL. XXVI. No. 52. Hh

long dwelt upon; and there is, occasionally, a repetition of nearly the same images and expressions. The reader may take the fol lowing as fair specimens.

And hark! the approaching trumpets, with a start,
On the smooth wind come dancing to the heart.
A moment's hush succeeds; and from the walls,
Firm and at once, a silver answer calls.

Then heave the crowd; and all, who best can strive
In shuffling struggle, tow'rd the palace drive,
Where balconied and broad, of marble fair,
On pillars it o'erlooks the public square,' &c.

For in this manner is the square set out :-
The sides, path-deep, are crowded round about,
And faced with guards, who keep the road entire ;
And opposite to these, a brilliant quire

Of knights and ladies hold the central spot,
Seated in groups upon a grassy plot;

The seats with boughs are shaded from above
Of early trees transplanted from a grove,

And in the midst, fresh whistling through the scene,
A lightsome fountain starts from out the green,
Clear and compact, till, at its height o'er-run,
It shakes its loosening silver in the sun.'
With various earnestness the crowd admire
Horsemen and horse, the motion and the attire.
Some watch, as they go by, the riders' 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;
The flowing back, firm chest, and fetlocks clean,
The branching veins ridging the glossy lean,
The mane hung sleekly, the projecting eye
That to the stander near looks awfully,
The finished head, in its compactness free,
Small, and o'erarching to the lifted knee,
The start and snatch, as if they felt the comb,
With mouths that fling about the creamy foam,
The snorting turbulence, tho nod, the champing,
The shift, the tossing, and the fiery tramping."

After all, the future husband does not appear, but his young