English Lands Letters and Kings 15

English Lands Letters and Kings 15

We all know the figure of Harold Skimpole, in Dickens’s _Bleak House_,

with traits so true to Leigh Hunt’s, that the latter’s friends held up a

warning finger, and said: “For shame!” to the novelist. Indeed, I think

Dickens felt relentings in his later years, and would have retouched the

portrait; but a man who paints with flesh and blood pigments cannot

retouch.

 

Certain it is that the household of Hunt was of a ram-shackle sort, and he

and his always very much out at ends. Even Carlyle, who was a neighbor at

Chelsea, was taken aback at the easy way in which Hunt confronted the

butcher-and-baker side of life; and the kindly Mrs. Carlyle drops a

half-querulous mention of her shortened larder and the periodic borrowings

of the excellent Mrs. Hunt.

 

 

_Hunt’s Verse._

 

But over all this we stretch a veil now, woven out of the little poems

that he has left. He wrote no great poems, to be sure; for here, as in

his prose, he is earnestly bent on carving little baskets out of

cherry-stones--little figures on cherry-stones--dainty hieroglyphics, but

always on cherry-stones!

 

His “Rimini,” embodying that old Dantesque story about Giovanni and Paolo

and Francesca, is his longest poem. There are exceedingly pretty and

delicate passages in it; I quote one or two:

 

“For leafy was the road with tall array

On either side of mulberry and bay,

And distant snatches of blue hills between;

And there the alder was, with its bright green,

And the broad chestnut, and the poplar’s shoot

That, like a feather, waves from head to foot;

With ever and anon majestic pines;

And still, from tree to tree, the early vines

Hung, garlanding the way in amber lines.

…

And then perhaps you entered upon shades,

Pillowed with dells and uplands ’twixt the glades

Through which the distant palace, now and then,

Looked forth with many windowed ken--

A land of trees which, reaching round about,

In shady blessing stretched their old arms out

With spots of sunny opening, and with nooks

To lie and read in--sloping into brooks,

Where at her drink you started the slim deer,

Retreating lightly with a lovely fear.

And all about the birds kept leafy house,

And sung and sparkled in and out the boughs,

And all about a lovely sky of blue

Clearly was felt, or down the leaves laughed through.”

 

And so on--executed with ever so much of delicacy--but not a sign or a

symbol of the grave and melancholy tone which should equip, even to the

utmost hem of its descriptive passages, that tragic story of Dante.

 

Those deft, little feathery touches--about deer, and birds, and leafy

houses, are not scored with the seriousness which in every line and pause

should be married with the intensity of the story. The painting of Mr.

Watts, of the dead Francesca--ghastly though it be--has more in it to

float one out into the awful current of Dante’s story than a world of the

happy wordy meshes of Mr. Hunt. A greater master would have brought in,

maybe, all those natural beauties of the landscape--the woods, the

fountains, the clear heaven--but they would all have been toned down to

the low, tragic movement, which threatens, and creeps on and on, and which

dims even the blue sky with forecast of its controlling gloom.

 

There is no such inaptness or inadequacy where Leigh Hunt writes of

crickets and grasshoppers and musical boxes. In his version of the old

classic story of “Hero and Leander,” however, the impertinence (if I may

be pardoned the language) of his dainty wordy dexterities is even more

strikingly apparent. _His_ Hero, waiting for her Leander, beside the

Hellespont,

 

“Tries some work, forgets it, and thinks on,

Wishing with perfect love the time were gone,

And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,

Taps on the casement-ledge with idle fingers.”

 

No--this is not a Greek maiden listening for the surge of the water before

the stalwart swimmer of Abydos; it is a London girl, whom the poet has

seen in a second-story back window, meditating what color she shall put to

the trimming of her Sunday gown!

 

Far better and more beautiful is this fathoming of the very souls of the

flowers:

 

“We are the sweet Flowers,

Born of sunny showers,

Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith:

Utterance mute and bright,

Of some unknown delight,

We feel the air with pleasure, by our simple breath;

All who see us, love us;

We befit all places;

Unto sorrow we give smiles; and unto graces, graces.

 

“Mark our ways--how noiseless

All, and sweetly voiceless,

Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;

Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.

We tread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

And leaf by leaf in silence show, ’till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers!

 

…

 

“Who shall say that flowers

Dress not Heaven’s own bowers?

Who its love, without them, can fancy--or sweet floor?

Who shall even dare

To say we sprang not there,

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?

Oh, pray believe that angels

From those blue Dominions

Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”

 

No poet of this--or many a generation past--has said a sweeter or more

haunting word for the flowers.

 

We will not forget the “Abou-ben-Adhem;” nor shall its commonness forbid

our setting this charmingly treated Oriental fable, at the end of our

mention of Hunt--a memorial banderole of verse:--

 

“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,

An Angel, writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;

And to the presence in the room, he said,--

‘What writest thou?’ The Vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord

Answered, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’

‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so;’

Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.’

The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night

It came again, with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,

And lo!--Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”

 

 

_An Irish Poet._

 

Among those who paid their visits of condolence to Leigh Hunt in the days

of his prisonhood, was Moore[51] the author of _Lalla Rookh_ and of _The

Loves of the Angels_. He was not used to paying visits in such quarters,

for he had an instinctive dislike for all uncanny things and disagreeable

places; nor was he ever a great friend of Hunt; but he must have had a

good deal of sympathy with him in that attack upon the Prince Regent which

brought about Hunt’s conviction. Moore, too, had his gibes at the

Prince--thinking that great gentleman had been altogether too neglectful

of the dignities of his high estate; but he was very careful that his

gibes should be so modulated as not to put their author in danger.

 

_Lalla Rookh_ may be little read nowadays; but not many years have passed

since this poem and others of the author’s used to get into the finest of

bindings, and have great currency for bridal and birthday gifts. Indeed,

there is a witching melody in Moore’s Eastern tales, and a delightful

shimmer and glitter of language, which none but the most cunning of our

present craft-masters in verse could reach.

 

Moore was born in Dublin, his father having kept a wine-shop there; and

his mother (he tells us) was always anxious about the quality of his

companions, and eager to build up his social standing--an anxiety which

was grafted upon the poet himself, and which made him one of the wariest,

and most coy and successful of society-seekers--all his life.

 

He was at the Dublin University--took easily to languages, and began

spinning off some of _Anacreon’s_ numbers into graceful English, even

before he went up to London--on his old mother’s savings--to study law at

the Temple. He was charmingly presentable in those days; very small, to be

sure, but natty, courteous, with a pretty modesty, and a voice that

bubbled over into music whenever he recited one of his engaging snatches

of melody. He has letters to Lords, too, and the most winning of tender

speeches and smiles for great ladies. He comes to an early interview with

the Prince of Wales--who rather likes the graceful Irish singer, and

flatters him by accepting the dedication of _Anacreon_ with smiles of

condescension--which Mr. Moore perhaps counted too largely upon. Never

had a young literary fellow of humble birth a better launch upon London

society. His Lords’ letters, and his pretty conciliatory ways, get him a

place of value (when scarce twenty-four) in Bermuda. But he is not the man

to lose his hold on London; so he goes over seas only to put a deputy in

place, and then, with a swift run through our Atlantic cities, is back

again. It is rather interesting to read now what the young poet says of us

in those green days:--In Philadelphia, it appears, the people quite ran

after him:

 

“I was much caressed while there.… and two or three little poems, of

a very flattering kind, some of their choicest men addressed to me.”

[And again.] “Philadelphia is the only place in America which can

boast any literary society.” [Boston people, I believe, never

admired Moore overmuch.]

 

Here again is a bit from his diary at Ballston--which was the Saratoga of

that day:--

 

“There were about four hundred people--all stowed in a miserable

boarding-house. They were astonished at our asking for basons and

towels in our rooms; and thought we might condescend to come down to

the Public Wash, with the other gentlemen, in the morning.”

 

Poor, dainty, Moore! But he is all right when he comes back to London, and

gives himself to old occupations of drawing-room service, and to the

coining of new, and certainly very sweet and tender, Irish melodies. He

loved to be tapped on the shoulder by great Dowagers, sparkling in

diamonds, and to be entreated--“Now, dear Mr. Moore, _do_ sing us one more song.”