Several songs of various casts are scattered through the volume. The following is the best : LOVE AND OPPORTUNITY. *O! who art thou, so fast proceeding, What form is that, which scowls beside thee? Learn then the fate may yet betide thee- p. 90. By Leigh Hunt. foolscap Murray, 1816. Art. VIII. The Story of Rimini, a Poem. Svo. pp. xx. 112. Price 6s. WE E have, in the present affluence of poetical genius, almost every style of poetry yearly issuing from the press; the imaginative philosophy of Wordsworth, the bosom touches of Southey, the stir and spirit of Scott, the voluptuous elegance of Moore, the intense feeling of Lord Byron and Joanna Baillie: yet we have nothing exactly in the manner of the Story of Rimini,' the easy graceful style of familiar narrative. This was a favourite style with the Italians. Chaucer brought it into our own country; but it is, perhaps, best known as that which Dryden adopted in his fables. Dryden, however, was not the best fitted to excel in this kind. Powerful interest, it is true, is not required in the narration; our pleasure is to arise chiefly from the description, and from the passion of the story. It was exactly in these two particulars that Dryden failed; what he was acquainted with, Dryden could indeed describe forcibly, for he always went strait to the point, never blundering about his meaning; but there is hardly to be found, in all his voluminous productions, a single image immediately from nature; and he has not a passage that strikes upon the heart, as if sent from the heart. Accordingly, we believe, the vigorous writing and free versification of Dryden's fables, are more praised than read. We are very glad to see the style revived by one so fitted to excel in it as Mr. Hunt. We wish indeed that the story * This stanza is imitated from a passage in the Occasione of Machiavelli. had moved on a little more rapidly; but we are not unwilling to loiter among the beautiful descriptions, and enjoy the fresh diction of Mr. Hunt. The tale is soon told. It consists of nothing but the gradual progress and final accomplishment of a criminal passion-a mutual passion of wife and brother-in-law. We give the Author full credit for the decency of his representations, for the absence of every thing that can disgust, or seduce, or inflame: but still we doubt whether such stories are not likely to do some hurt to the cause of morality; whether it is possible so to distinguish between the offence and the offender, as to render the one detestable, while the other is represented as so very amiable; and whether indeed this amiableness is not gotten by paring off' sundry little portions of the sin; such as selfishness-that unheroic quality, on the part of the seducer; base infidelity on the part of the woman. Our objections to these stories on the score of good taste, we have formerly stated. But we hasten away from criticism to poetry. We shall give the reader a few specimens of Mr. H.'s powers in those two grand parts of poetry, the descriptive and the passionate. Nothing can be more fresh and fragrant, more unfeigned and con amore, than the following description of a clear spring morning, with which the poem opens. The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May Round old Ravenna's clear shewn towers and bay, A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen, Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green; And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay.' pp. 3-4. The evening is nearly as good. • It was a lovely evening, fit to close A lovely day, and brilliant in repose. The softened breeze came smoothing here and there; And distant snatches of blue hills between; And still from tree to tree the early vines Hung garlanding the way in amber lines.' pp. 32-33. The following are but touches, but they are exquisite ones. 'One day,-'twas on a summer afternoon, When airs and gurgling brooks are best in tune, p. 72. Appeared the streaky fingers of the day.' p. 52. In this season of the year, when spring is just waking in the country, and bringing in hope and love and poetry, we cannot refrain from tantalizing our London readers with one extract more. A noble range it was, of many a rood, Walled round with trees, and ending in a wood: A winding stream about, clear and glad,* With plots of grass, and perfumed walks between With orange, whose warm leaves so timely suit, * A syllable has slipped out of this line, at press, we suppose. And midst the flowers, turfed round beneath a shade And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright, Which through the darksome tops glimmered with showering light. So now you walked beside an odorous bed Of gorgeous hues, white, azure, golden, red; Clearly was felt, or down the leaves laughed through; eye Where when the sunshine struck a yellow shade, Thronged in dark pillars up the gold green light.' pp. 65-68. We pass on to the human part of the story. The description of the bride is, we think, very touching. She, who had been beguiled,-she, who was made To bless and to be blessed,-to be heart-bare To one who found his bettered likeness there, To think for ever with him like a bride, To haunt his eye, like taste personified, To double his delight, to share his sorrow, And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow. p. 55. Very amiable too are the following lines, in which the first feelings of love are described in the brother. And she became companion of his thought: Society her sense, reading her books, Music her voice, every sweet thing her looks, And did he stroll into some lonely place, Under the trees, upon the thick soft grass, How charming, would he think, to see her here!' pp. 57,58. The following needs no comment. But she, the gentler frame,-the shaken flower, She hid with both her hands her streaming face. But worse to her than all (and oh! thought she, The sight of infant was, or child at play; Then would she turn, and move her lips, and pray, Her death must close our extracts. • Her favorite lady then with the old nurse |