Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats
John Stuart Mill · en
"But a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewell!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."[191]
Again:
"I own
This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,
Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl
Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!
Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share
This sister's love with me? Like one resign'd
And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind
In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:
'Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,
Of jubilee to Dian:--truth I heard?
Well then, I see there is no little bird.'"[192]
Occasionally there are passages in the bad taste of Hunt, as this example:
"Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,
By the most soft completion of thy face,
Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes,
And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties--
These tenderest, and by the nectar wine,
The passion--"[193]
Likewise:
"O that I
Were rippling round her dainty fairness now,
Circling about her waist, and striving how
To entice her to a dive! then stealing in
Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin."[194]
In July, 1820, appeared the volume _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes
and other Poems_. The lingering influence of Hunt is seen in a fondness
for the short poetic tale, in the direct and simple narrative style, and
in the return in _Lamia_ to the use of the heroic couplet; but that, along
with the other poems of the volume, is free from the Huntian
eccentricities of manner and diction found in Keats's earlier works. He
had come into his own. In treatment, _Lamia_ is almost faultless in
technique and in matters of taste; although Mr. Colvin has pointed out as
an exception the first fifteen lines of the second book, which he says
have Leigh Hunt's "affected ease and fireside triviality."[195] One of the
few occurrences of Hunt's manner is seen in the _Eve of St. Agnes_.
"Paining with eloquence her balmy side."[196]
The famous passage in the _Eve of St. Agnes_ describing all manner of
luscious edibles is very suggestive of one in Hunt's _Bacchus and Ariadne_
which enumerates articles of the same kind.[197] It is in this latter
poem and in the _Story of Rimini_ that Hunt's power of description most
nearly approximates to that of Keats. In 1831, in the _Gentle Armour_,
Hunt is the imitator of Keats, as Mr. Colvin has already pointed out.[198]