I believe it is unlikely that any one of ordinary
experience and discernment, could read the first twelve or fourteen lines of your article on Mr.
Hunt’s ‘Story of
Rimini,’ without thinking them a tissue of falsehood—ill enough woven to
be sure!—but full as malicious as inconsequent. Considering, however, that it is possible
you may have been seven, fourteen, or even twenty-one years out of England; so, it may be
likely that you ‘have not indeed read one line that he ever
wrote.’ And, if such the length of your absence, it is also equally possible you have
never heard that he has been for many years the Editor of the Examiner. Contributor as you are to a public journal, and desirous of course to be
correct, even upon the most trivial matters, and at any rate deemed sufficient to swell the
catalogue of a poet’s disqualifications, it may be as well to inform you of an error
in 4 limine—a mistake
in the very first line of your essay—‘Such an introduction’ (as you would
say) ‘is not calculated to make a very favourable impression.’ Mr.
Hunt was not confined in Newgate—had you thought
‘Carlton-House’ a more disgraceful sound, I verily believe, in your eagerness to
say something, you would have adopted it. He was imprisoned in Horsemonger-lane gaol, for an
imputed libel on the Prince Regent, wherein thinking himself
‘pricked’ to ’t by honesty,’ but with perhaps more courage than
prudence, he brought sundry charges against that person; ‘All which though he might most
powerfully and potently believe, yet, it was not held honesty to be thus
set down.’—For this, therefore, he was sentenced to a confinement of two years in
the above-mentioned prison of Horsemonger-lane; and his brother, as publisher of the offensive words, was immured for the same space of
time in that of Cold-bath-fields, each being also subjected to a heavy fine.
Whether his prison-house was called Newgate or Horsemonger-lane, was perhaps
then, and certainly must be now, of no importance to the Author. But it is pretty obvious you
| 5 |
But what I must still enquire had his prison to do with his poem?—
‘* * * * * * Th’ oppressor holds the body bound, ‘But knows not what a range the spirit takes.’ |
There is no discrepancy in the Second Canto; it possesses many delightful
passages. —Who imputes to their memory, that Chaucer, and Cervantes, and
Raleigh, and Galileo, were half their lives imprisoned? I
| 6 |
To begin with your critique—you charge Mr. Hunt with the violation of a rule in grammar in p. 15 of his work—I deny it.
In the next place, you enquire, what Mr. Hunt can mean by saying, that, ‘Milton had learnedly a musical ear!’—In my copy, (and probably in your’s, as two or three lines preceding, you have given the real passage) the words are, ‘Spencer who was musical from pure taste, Milton who was learnedly so,’ &c. which I suppose is consistent and comprehensible.
‘Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, &c. (says Mr. Hunt) ‘are about as different from Pope as the church organ is from the bell in the steeple, or to give him a more decorous comparison, the song of the nightingale from that of the cuckoo.’
| 7 |
You cannot discover why the latter is a more decorous comparison—the word here, means—‘suitable to a character.’ (Johnson) You cannot make out whether Pope is the organ or the bell, the nightingale or the cuckoo.’ I should think no one versed in the ordinary construction of a sentence could fail in this discovery. If Mr. H. as you shrewdly suppose, knows that, for want of a better, Pope was called by his contemporaries ‘the nightingale;’ he may very well think now, that the note of another bird would have been more appropriately applied to him. The sweet song of the former is richly varied, and Pope in his versification, was of all poets perhaps the most monotonous:
‘His cuckoo-song verses half up and half down,’* |
Alluding to the distressed, and affectionate old nurse, your critical acumen is astounding:—because it is said
* * * * * * * * * * ’ She pressed close ‘Her withered lips to keep the tears that rose.’ |
| 8 |
You object to the epithet ‘clipsome’ as being applied to a lady’s waist; and because, truly, it is not to be found in any vernacular tongue! Such a reason could be expected only from a writer in an anti-reformist Review. Can any one reasonably hesitate at the import of the word?
‘What (say you) is the meaning of a ‘quoit-like drop?’ Mr. Hunt certainly did not mean a drop of vinegar, or the new drop—he alluded to the fall of a horse’s foot, to which I cannot but think that of a quoit aptly compared—perhaps you think so too, or you would have given the context.
Your next enquiry is, ‘where the author met with his swaling a jerked feather?’ The line in the original is:—‘And the
jerked feather swaling in the bonnet.’ A jerked feather swaling, and, swaling a jerked feather, do not appear to me the same:—a prejudiced critic
misquoting, and misquoting a preju-
| 9 |
What fault can be found with the expression ‘Music unbedinned with drums?’ You leave out the word drums, only because your readers would then have seen the propriety of the phrase.
You object to the epithet ‘half-indifferent wonderment’ as applied to the ‘plodding woodman.’ Suffer our readers upon having the whole passage set before them to decide.
|
‘But scarce their eyes encounter living thing,
Save now and then a goat loose wandering,
Or a few cattle looking up aslant,
With sleepy eyes, and meek mouths ruminant;
Or once a plodding woodman old and bent,
Passing with half-indifferent wonderment,
Yet, turning at the last, to look once more,
Then feels his trembling staff and onward as before.’
p. 37.
|
The word ‘enormous’ as applied to the ‘shout’ of a
multitude, I believe to be equally proper, as when applied to length, breadth, and thickness.
This it is to criticise poetry!—What work you would have
| 10 |
In sneering at the frequent use of the word ‘heave,’ you have been incorrect in one of your quotations—inadvertently of course—only it does not happen to improve the passage. The trumpeters are described, not as heaving to the croud, but as sitting ‘stately, and heaving to the sway below;’ which I consider as an apposite description of the motion communicated by the horse in walking. No man I imagine, would or could, assume a very stately air, when heaved by a croud.—This is sheer malevolence!—Moreover, you have not proved that the word ‘heaved’ has been in a single instance misapplied, but have culled it from four distinct spots of the poem, and huddled them together in order that their appearance may be cloying and unfavourable.
Now for an exemplification of your candour in producing passages of the poem ‘in extenso,’ that the reader may judge for himself, and prove your right and title to that indis-
|
| 11 |
‘Sirrah! ’tis conscience makes you squeak!’ |
But about to criticise a poem, what business have you to be prejudiced?—suppose Mr. Hunt had retained his quondam mistress as waiting-woman to his wife;—suppose he were a gambler, an adulterer, or a debauchee—one or all of these characters,—suppose he had been an horse-jockey who had drugged his horse, that he might be a gainer by the animal’s failure;—what would all this have to do with the merits, or demerits of his poem?
But to return to the passages, by which the ‘unprejudiced-as-possible
critic’ would
| 12 |
| 13 |
The description of the fountain, p. 8. The portrait of an accomplished horseman, p. 20, beginning ‘His haughty steed.’ &c. The journey from Ravenna, beginning at p. 31, which would have adorned the pages of your Review. The portrait of Don Giovanni, p. 45. The description of The Garden, beginning at p. 65, and ending at p. 73, to my taste yields to very few rural scenes—certainly to none of the present day.—The affecting picture of the heroine, beginning at p. 87.—‘But she the gentler frame.’ &c.—There are few readers, I believe, who would hesitate for a moment in preferring the passages I have cited, to the two which you
‘Have choycely picked out from all the rest, And laid forth for ensample of the best.’ |
All this is however as it should be; no judgment is decidedly perverted (whether
honestly, or dishonestly,) till after blinking
| 14 |
But I remember, I thought it possible you might have noticed these important passages as instances of failure. If such however your opinion, I have great pleasure in differing from you. You consider them—not versifications, in good sooth, but, ‘mere metrical adjustments of what Mr. Hunt found in the specimens of early English Romances.’—‘The first is the story of Launcelot of the Lake, on which the plot of Rimini hinges.’
What authority have you for tracing this to the ‘specimens?’—It is not to be found therein—Why must Mr. Hunt be made out a mere culler of abstracts?—‘Speak Bezonian!’* Has he not told you (pref. p. XI.) that he possesses a copy of Launcelot of the Lake in Italian, which imperfect as it is, might be sufficient for his purpose? And I repeat, that though the plot ‘hinges’ upon the heroine’s perusal of the important Launcelot, it was sufficient for his purpose, in introducing the scene between the lovers, to give a sketch only of its principal features.
|
* See Theobald’s note to this passage, Henry IV. 2nd Part, Act V. |
| 15 |
If you think the narrative defective in the interest of which such an abridgment is susceptible, I must own I have hitherto found you singular in the opinion.
In the second instance, Mr. H. by referring his readers to the source whence Giovanni’s speech is taken, has anticipated the discovery which you usher in with such ‘dreadful note of preparation.’ Acknowledging it among others, he adds they are obligations, ‘which, perhaps after all he has not handled well enough to make worth acknowledgment.’ This is a confession, modest enough one might hope to have neutralized your spleen, or, if that were impossible, at least to have directed its dirty work towards some other quarter.
I must dismiss this subject (dry and perplexing as the Arabian desart) with
finally asking, why, having the fear of imputed malice before your eyes, since ‘the poem
is not destitute of merit,’ and with a choice of originality such as has been pointed
out, you rather present your readers with these passages seemingly only to call them mere
metrical adjustments?—Passages too, in which the merit of originality was in one
| 16 |
The poem is not destitute of merit you have told us, but, to be sure, that merit is the result of certain principles which, you do not appreciate or acknowledge; hinc illa lachrymæ!—What right has any poem to merits undeduced from principles, which, pedantic precedent, and prescriptive bigotry have not sanctioned? This is ‘not seeing the wood for trees,’ or, like the Irishman who preferred the moon to the sun, because the latter shone by day-light, and consequently could not be of use. Here however my task is easy, for you have really not deigned to say anything against these principles. Upon this point, therefore, as I am not writing a ‘Reponse au Silence,’ you are unanswerable!
But I find that notwithstanding its ‘merit,’ and that although
‘there are here and there some well executed descriptions, and occasionally a line, of
which the sense and the expression are good,’ we are immediately
told
| 17 |
‘To say, and strait unsay, * * * * * * Argues no Critic, but a liar trac’d.’ P. L. iv. 947. |
A word more, and I trust I shall have done with your criticism. The Spaniards, I believe, have a proverb, ‘Let him whose house is made of glass, beware how he throws stones at his neighbour’s windows.’ You have charged Mr. Hunt without attempting to adduce any proof, with a violation of grammar:—in page 480 of your production in the Review, you say: ‘This passage, however, like that which precedes it, are mere metrical adjustments.’—Brother—let me pull the beam out of thine eye!
It never was my intention to follow you through all the obliquities of your
objections. Faults, the poem doubtless has; and this any one might safely predicate, even,
where his discrimination is unequal to their detection. I will also concede the probability of
your having ‘stumbled unawares’ upon them; your essay therefore may not be
destitute of its appropriate merit, and, ‘bating the qualities of
judgment, candour, and perspicuity,
| 18 |
While my pen has been indignantly employed—less in defence of merit, than in castigation of malevolence, I have found it impossible to repress certain thoughts upon the influence of Reviews in general. I avail myself of the opportunity to subjoin a word or two upon the subject.
Literature (alack the while!) has its middle men as well
as the more ordinary concerns of life; the prosecution of whose interest is alike pernicious to
that of the caterers, and the consumers of intellectual food. While the soi-disant guardians of public taste, morals, and
politics, arrogate a prescriptive right to all the genius, common-sense, and learning of the
nation; the esprit du corps of booksellers has established a line of
circumvalla-
| 19 |
Upon some occasions the world has certainly been lately indebted to Reviews, for
| 20 |
Every day reveals some new instance of the chicanery and obliquity,—the venal and groveling spirit of Reviewers in past days. The times, I fear me, are little better. We are still in the hands of men whose good works are more than counterbalanced by their evil:—men whose attainments are the more to be deplored, seeing that they have not taught them that straight-forward wisdom, ‘of doing unto others as they would have others do unto them!’ So far from diffusing a wholesome spirit through the world of letters—so far from guarding its privileges—Reviews form a sort of nucleus, round which the venom of every noxious creature is collected ready for circulation:—a sanctuary of refuge for the bravos of literature; whence they issue forth muffled, and ‘kill men i’ the dark!’
As to the Review in the service of
which
| 21 |
You had never read a line that Mr. Hunt has
written, otherwise perhaps you might object to his having at different times at-
| 22 |
Ex fumo dare lucem.—It is matter of comfort to
us poor fellows, readers of your Review and of its
opposing Brother; that upon some
occasions—when the original is inaccessible to our means—by taking the middle
course, we may be enabled to perform a satisfactory estimate of an Author’s
merits,—for, like the Dutch weather-house, if the man have an inclination to take the
air, the woman seems in
| 23 |
Allow me a word for myself, and I must have done. To an adept like you it is
hardly necessary to say—I am unhabituated in the art of writing my thoughts:—this
consideration occurred but tardily to my mind—but at no time would it have withheld me
from advocating the cause of candour and feeling, against dissimulation and injustice. And even
mine—even the humblest arm, is I trust available against an adversary, (strongly as he
may seem intrenched,) who has made to himself so many vulnerable points. Indeed, it is matter
of triumph to the friends of genius and integrity, that the Poem of Rimini, could elicit no rougher treatment even from a
| 24 |
It will be hence inferred that, even were I known, I am not vain enough to expect any accession to my importance from this adventure.—No! I am sensible of my disadvantage.—I have engaged in a cause where no honour can accrue to success, while failure involves inevitable disgrace: a strong cause and a weak opponent. At the same time though I have not ‘fidgeted’ myself into the company of a superior, I am not insensible to the disparity of the combatants; for a weak champion in a bad quarrel may become formidable when clad in brass. This reminds me of the purport of my ‘word for myself,’ which was to make apology—if it will be taken—for the rudeness of this address: though an impression may be made on some men with an horse-whip, others are to be attacked only with a crow-bar!