[53] The same volume contained a preface on the origin and history of masques and an _Ode for the Spring of 1814_. Byron said of the latter that the "expressions were _buckram_ except here and there." The masque, he thought, contained "not only poetry and thought in the body, but much research and good old reading in your prefatory matter." Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 200, June 1, 1815. [54] See chapter V, p. 19. [55] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 330. [56] Who loves to peer up at the morning sun, With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek, Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek For meadows where the little rivers run; Who loves to linger with the brightest one Of Heaven (Hesperus) let him lowly speak These numbers to the night, and starlight meek, Or moon, if that her hunting be begun. He who knows these delights, and too is prone To moralize upon a smile or tear, Will find at once religion of his own, A bower for his spirit, and will steer To alleys where the fir-tree drops its cone, Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are seer. (_Complete Works of John Keats_, ed by Forman, II, p. 183.) [57] Lowell said of Hunt: "No man has ever understood the delicacies and luxuries of the language better than he." [58] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 226, October 22, 1815. [59] _Ibid._, III, p. 418. [60] _Ibid._, III, p. 242, October 30, 1815. [61] _Ibid._, III, p. 267, February 29, 1816. [62] _Ibid._, IV, p. 237, June 1, 1818. [63] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 486-487. [64] Medwin, _Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 187. [65] In the preface to the _Story of Rimini_ (London, 1819, p. 16), Hunt says that a poet should use an actual existing language, and quotes as authorities, Chaucer, Ariosto, Pulci, even Homer and Shakespeare. He thought simplicity of language of greater importance even than free versification in order to avoid the cant of art: "The proper language of poetry is in fact nothing different from that of real life, and depends for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of what it speaks, omitting mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases which are cant of ordinary discourse." [66] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 418. [67] Mr. A. T. Kent in the _Fortnightly Review_ (vol. 36, p. 227), points out that Leigh Hunt in the preface to the _Story of Rimini_, avoided the mistake of Wordsworth in "looking to an unlettered peasantry for poetical language," and quotes him as saying that one should "add a musical modulation to what a fine understanding might naturally utter in the midst of its griefs and enjoyments." Kent says we have here "two vital points on which Wordsworth, in his capacity of critic, had failed to insist." [68] _Autobiography_, II, p. 24. [69] To be found chiefly in the _Feast of the Poets_. [70] In 1855, in _Stories in Verse_, Hunt changed his acknowledged allegiance from Dryden to Chaucer.