_The worst of Prince Giovanni_, as his bride
Too quickly found, was an ill-tempered pride.
How nobly does Mr. Hunt celebrate the combined charms of the fair sex,
and the country!
_The two divinest things this world_ HAS GOT,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!--p. 58.
A rural spot, indeed, seems to inspire Mr. Hunt with peculiar elegance
and sweetness: for he says, soon after, of Prince Paulo--
For welcome grace, there rode not such another,
Nor yet for strength, except his lordly brother.
Was there a court day, or a sparkling feast,
Or better still--_to my ideas, at least!_--
A summer party in the green wood shade.--p. 50.
So much for this new invented _strength_ and _dignity_: we shall add a
specimen of his syntax:
But fears like these he never entertain'd,
And had they crossed him, would have been disdain'd.--p. 50.
* * * * *
After these extracts, we have but one word more to say of Mr. Hunt's
poetry; which is, that amidst all his vanity, vulgarity, ignorance, and
coarseness, there are here and there some well-executed descriptions,
and occasionally a line of which the sense and the expression are good--
The interest of the story itself is so great that we do not think it
wholly lost even in Mr. Hunt's hands. He has, at least, the merit of
telling it with decency; and, bating the qualities of versification,
expression, and dignity, on which he peculiarly piques himself, and in
which he has utterly failed, the poem is one which, in our opinion at
least, may be read with satisfaction after GALT'S Tragedies.
Mr. Hunt prefixes to his work a dedication to Lord Byron, in which he
assumes a high tone, and talks big of his "_fellow-dignity_" and
independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we know not; perhaps the
_dignity_ of a _fellow_; but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more
unlucky in his pompous pretension to versification and good language,
than he is in that which he makes, in this dedication, to _proper
spirit_, as he calls it, and _fellow-dignity_; for we never, in so few
lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man,
conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse
flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and
fidget himself into the _stout-heartedness_ of being familiar with a
LORD.