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that would be agreeable to his aristocratical prejudices . But we refer to the complete and elaborate revision which the poems have undergone , we believe from one end to the other , to fit them for reappearance at the public bar . We even think that in some instances the poet has used both the pruning and the grafting knife too largely ; e . g . in the ' Feast of the Poets / which we have compared with the original copy as published in the ' Reflector , * and
find guilty of some defalcations which we cannot help regretting . The satire was so playful , that we cannot think it required any palinode . We hope that the poet has attached too much consequence to this elegant and brilliant jeu d esprit , in imputing to it , as he does , not a few of the animosities which have obscured his fame as a poet , and embittered his lot as a man . We attribute these to a very different origin . But both these causes , we trust , will soon be of the things that were .
We return to the * Story of Rimini . ' It is founded upon the well-known passage in the ' Inferno' ( which stands there , says our author , characteristically , 4 like a lily in the mouth of Tartarus , ' ) where Dante tells , in half a dozen lines , the tale of two broken Italian hearts : * That day we read no more ! ' Our countryman has wrought a powerful story of passion and misery out
of the simple but pregnant materials of the poetic Michael Angelo . It is something to have told a story after Dante ; it is something more to have made it so beautifully his own . We will repeat it after neither ; yet cannot abstain from giving a few citations from the English poem , which may justify us for the opinion we have expressed of its high poetic deservings . Here is a fountain : —
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 . P » 5 . Here is an Italian garden ; seen , however , with an English eye : —
So now you walked beside an odorous bed Of gorgeous hues , white , azure , golden , red ; And now turned off into a leafy walk , Close and continuous , fit for lover ' s talk ; And now pursued the stream , and as you trod Onward and onward o ' er the velvet sod ,
Felt on your face an air , watery and sweet , And a new sense in your soft ' lighting feet ; And then perhaps you entered upon shades , Pillowed with dells and uplands ' twixt the glades , Throveh which the distant palace , now and then ,
Looked lordly 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
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The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt 181
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 181, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/37/
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