Foliage, by Leigh HuntQuarterly Review[John Taylor Coleridge] Markup and editing by David Hill Radcliffe Completed December 2009 JoColer.1818.Hunt Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech Blacksburg, Virginia
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Coleridge, John Taylor, Sir, 1790-1876Foliage, by Leigh HuntQuarterly ReviewLondonJanuary 18181836325-35
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THEQUARTERLY REVIEW.
Art. III.—Foliage; or, Poems Original and
Translated. By Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London, 1818.
Winter has at length, passed away: spring
returns upon us, like a reconciled mistress, with redoubled smiles and graces; and even we poor
critics, ‘in populous city pent,’ feel a sort of ungainly inspiration from
the starved leaflets and smutty buds in our window-pots; what, then, must be the feelings with
which the Arcadian Hunt, ‘half-stretched on the ground, With a cheek-smoothing air coming taking him
round,’—p. lxxxi. must welcome the approach of the ‘fair-limbed’ goddess to his rural retreat at Hampstead? He owes her indeed especial gratitude; and it would
be unpardonable in him to suffer his ‘day-sweet’ voice, and*
‘smoothing-on’ ‘sleeking-up’ harp to be mute upon this occasion. The
spring is to Mr. Hunt, what the night was to Endymion, the season for receiving peculiar favours; the ‘smiling
Naiads,’ and even the ‘coy Ephydriads’ will soon again admit him ‘in
sun-sprinkled ease’ to their bath and toilette; while the bolder ‘Nephehads’
will leave their chariots in the air to kiss with ‘breathless lips serene’ their
‘little ranting’ favourite adoncino d'amore.
Mr. Hunt's offering to the season (we do not mean the
bookmaking and bookselling season) consists of ‘foliage’ and
‘evergreens.’ Of each in order,—but first a few words of the dedication and
preface. The former is addressed to a gentleman, of whom
we know nothing, but who deserves, we doubt not, more than his friend's delicacy permitted him
to record in his praise. Yet the good qualities which are with exquisite judgment selected, as
entitling him to the honourable post which he occupies, must we think a little surprize even
the possessor himself.
‘You are not one of those, who pay the strange compliment to heaven of
depreciating this world, because you believe in another; you admire its beauties both in nature
and art.’ These are certainly very uncommon merits; but further—‘A rational
piety and a manly patriotism does (do) not hinder you from putting the Phidian Jupiter over your organ, or flowers at the end of your room.’
While we give the writer all due credit for the admirably close connection between the first
and last part of this sentence, we must be excused if we hesitate to believe in the existence
of magnanimity so superhuman. The partiality of the friend is but too manifest in such praise;
indeed Mr. Hunt seems to feel this himself, for he concludes
by soothing the offended modesty of his hero—‘Pray pardon me this public
compliment, for my own sake, and for sincerity's.’
The dedication is followed by a very entertaining preface; but we will take shame
to ourselves, and honestly confess, that a certain beautiful and indefinite vagueness in the
expression has made it difficult for us to understand parts—while the excursiveness of
Mr. Hunt's mind prevents our following him so as to
connect the whole. We are aware of the ready answer—‘intellectum non
* We think it but candid to state thus early, that we claim no other praise than
that of selection, for the many new and beautiful epithets, with which this article
is adorned. The whole merit of original invention, as far as we know, is Mr. Hunt's,—for our own sakes we could have
wished that he had subjoined an explanation of some of them, as we fear that in our
ignorance of their meanings we may sometimes, with all our care, have been guilty
of misapplying them.
adfero,’ and we bow to it; but as a specimen of what
we mean in both ways, we quote the following passage. It follows a few remarks on the downfall
of the French school of poetry and the consequences of that downfall, with a definition of the
true principles of poetry.
‘An unattractive creed, however the hypocritical or envious
may affect to confound the cheerful tendencies of our nature with vicious ones, or the
melancholy may be led really to do so, is an argument against itself. Shall we never have done
with begging the question against enjoyment, and denying or doubting the earthly possibility of
the only end of virtue itself, with a dreary wilfulness that prevents our obtaining it? The
fatality goes even farther—for let them say what they please to the contrary, they who
are most doubtful of earth, are far from being the most satisfied with regard to heaven. Even
when they think they have got at their security in the latter respect, it is through the medium
of opinions which make humanity shudder; and this, except with the most brutal selfishness,
comes round to the same thing. The depreciators of this world—the involuntary blasphemers
of Nature's goodness—have tried melancholy and partial systems enough, and talked enough
of their own humility. It is high time for them and for all of us to look after health and
sociality; and to believe that although we cannot alter the world with an ipse
dixit, we need not become desponding, or mistake a disappointed egotism for
humility. We should consider ourselves as what we really are—creatures made to enjoy more
than to know, to know infinitely nevertheless in proportion as we enjoy kindly, and finally to
put our own shoulders to the wheel, and get out of the mud upon the green sward again, like the
waggoner, whom Jupiter admonishes in the fable. But we
persist in being unhealthy, body and mind, and taking our jaundice for wisdom, and then because
we persist, we say we must persist on. We admire the happiness, and sometimes the better wisdom
of children; and yet we imitate the worst of their nonsense—“I can't—because
I can't.“’"—p. 15.
Now we would humbly ask how all this is connected with that which precedes it; or
passing over the transition, we would beg Mr. Hunt to tell us
what it means by itself. Is nothing intended which the mere words do not express? Is all this
argumentation lavished on a few gloomy and disordered ascetics, who will never read
Mr. Hunt's book, and could not be benefited by it if they should? We
suspect he would disclaim such beating of the air; and when we find him asserting in the next
page that the story of Rimini was written with a
moral aim; and shortly after talking of a man's ‘posing his apprehension with these
involved riddles and enigmas of the Divinity, with incarnation and resurrection’; when we
are told in a Sonnet on degrading Notions of the Deity, without limitation or caution, that men
in general have set up ‘A phantom swelled into grim size Out of their own passions and bigotries, And then for fear proclaim it meek and sage! And this they call a light and a revealing
——’ p. cxxii. when we consider too the compositions* of many of those with whom he has recorded his
sympathy and agreement in this volume, we fear there can be no want of charity in assigning to
this passage, and to many others scattered of set purpose through the book, a far more
important, but a more offensive object. It may seem a wild apprehension to talk of the
systematic revival of Epicureism amongst us in this age of the world; yet something very like
it both speculatively and practically, and that too in its most dangerous because least
offensive form, seems to be inculcated in all the writings we have alluded to. Lucretius is the philosopher whom these men profess most to
admire; and their leading tenet is, that the enjoyment of the pleasures of intellect and sense
is not to be considered as the permitted, and regulated use of God's blessings, but the great
object, and duty of life. Strip Mr. Hunt of his ‘leafy
luxuries,’ ‘his flowrets,’ ‘his wine, music, and sociality,’ and
this is the bare maxim on which he builds. He may himself perhaps, partly from a namby-pamby
disposition, partly from circumstances, and still more we should hope from the force of early
principles, live on the safe side of his own theory; but we are greatly mistaken if as much can
be affirmed even of all the first preachers of this new sect; and we are quite sure that it
ought not to be expected from their followers. There are many obvious reasons why the author of
a dangerous moral tenet may himself escape the danger—Epicurus, we believe, did so; but they who have neither the intellectual pride
of a first discovery to compensate them for self-restriction, nor the ardent anxiety for the
reputation of an infant sect to support them against their own principle, will certainly soon
push it, as the Epicureans did, to its legitimate consequences, all impurity and all impiety.
Upon the reasoning of the particular passage quoted it would be a waste of time
to argue; yet a few words may be allowed us. The term ‘unattractive creed’ is a
very vague one for a philosophical reasoner—creeds are attractive or not according to the
state of heart and mind in which the subject is to whom they are proposed. The Tupinamban
Indian found a creed unattractive, that would not tolerate cannibalism; and the Caffre does not
* One of these is now lying before us—the production of a man of some ability, and possessing itself some
beauty; but we are in doubt, whether it would be morally right to lend it notoriety by
any comments. We know the author's disgraceful and flagitious history well, and could
put down some of the vain boasting of his preface. At Eton we remember him notorious
for setting fire to old trees with burning glasses, no unmeet emblem for a man, who
perverts his ingenuity and knowledge to the attacking of all that is ancient and
venerable in our civil and religious institutions.
easily renounce his filth and garbage: so the vain and disappointed man,
the factious citizen, the adulterer—and he, if such there be, who thinks even adultery
vapid unless he can render it more exquisitely poignant by adding incest to it, all these must
find a creed unattractive, that enjoins humility, order, purity of heart and practice. But
Mr. Hunt is in a state of deplorable ignorance for
himself, if he thinks that Christianity is an unattractive creed to the sincere Christian, or
that it demands from him any sacrifice, which is not conducive to his real enjoyment even of
this life. On this subject we cannot express ourselves so well as in the words of one of the
brightest ornaments of this age and nation.
‘Rich and multiplied are the springs of innocent relaxation. The Christian relaxes in the
temperate use of all the gifts of Providence. Imagination and taste and genius, and the
beauties of creation, and the works of art, lie open to him. He relaxes in the feast of reason,
in the sweets of friendship, in the endearments of love, in the exercise of hope, of
confidence, of joy, of gratitude, of universal good will, of all the benevolent and generous
affections, which by the gracious ordination of our Creator, while they disinterestedly intend
only happiness to others, are most surely productive to ourselves of complacency and peace.
Little do they know of the true measure of enjoyment, who can compare these delightful
complacencies with the frivolous pleasures of dissipation, or the coarse gratifications of
sensuality.’
We have but one more remark to add on this head: Mr.
Hunt may flatter himself with possessing a finer eye, and a warmer feeling for
the loveliness of nature, or congratulate himself on the philosophic freedom with which he
follows her impulses—he may look upon us and all who differ from him as dull creatures,
who have no right to judge of his privileged opinions. Our path indeed may be a plain and
beaten one, but at least it keeps us from some things, that seem to be grievous
errors—new names and specious declamations do not easily deceive us. We should not, for
instance, commend as singularly amiable the receiving great and unmerited favours to be
returned with venomous and almost frantic hatred; we are at a loss for the decency which rails
at marriage, or the honour which pollutes it; and we have still a reluctance to condemn as a
low prejudice the mysterious feeling of separation, which consecrates, and draws to closer
intimacy the communion of brothers and sisters. We may be very narrow-minded, but we look upon
it still as somewhat dishonourable to have been expelled from a University for the monstrous
absurdity of a ‘mathematical demonstration of the non-existence of a God:’
according to our understandings, it is not proof of a very affectionate
heart to break that of a wife by cruelty and infidelity; and if we were told of a man, who,
placed on a wild rock among the clouds, yet even in that height surrounded by a loftier
amphitheatre of spire-like mountains, hanging over a valley of eternal ice and show, where the
roar of mighty waterfalls was at times unheeded from the hollow and more appalling thunder of
the deep and unseen avalanche,—if we were told of a man who, thus witnessing the
sublimest assemblage of natural objects, should retire to the cabin near, and write
άθεος after his name in the album, we hope our
own feeling would be pity rather than disgust; but we should think it imbecility indeed to
court that man's friendship, or to celebrate his intellect or his heart as the wisest or
warmest of the age. Mr. Hunt may trace in all these things the loftier
spirits that are to exalt mankind; but if this he all that he has gained by the euphrasy and
rue with which his visual nerve is purged, he must not be offended if we say with blind
Tiresias, ϕρονειν ώς
δεινον, ένθα μη
τεληλυει
ϕρονȣντι
We have already, without intending it, filled the limits to which Mr. Hunt is entitled; but he might complain of us, if we took no
notice, as we promised, of the poems which form the body of his volume. And this is a more
agreeable part of our task, because, with much to blame in some of them, there is also
something to praise in others, and we shall be enabled to lay an extract or two before our
readers, which may in some measure compensate for the dullness of our preceding remarks.
Mr. Hunt's faults are a total want of taste, and of ear for metrical
harmony; an indulgence of cant terms to a ridiculous excess, an ignorance of common language, a
barbarous and uncouth combination of epithets, an affectation of language and sentiment, and
what is a far more serious charge, though it occurs but seldom, an impurity of both. He may
amuse or deceive himself with distinctions between voluptuousness and grossness, but will he
never learn that things indifferent or innocent in themselves may become dangerous from the
weakness or corruption of the recipient? An author is bound to consider not how
Adam and Eve in Paradise would have been affected
by this or that description, but how in the present state of society it may operate on those
for whom he writes. If the thing be practically pernicious, its abstract innocence is but a
slight compensation; and however he may plead a compact theory of his own, no man in a work of
fancy is justified in writing that which a modest woman cannot hear without pain.
Mr. Hunt's merits are a general richness of language, and a
picturesque imagination; this last indeed, the faculty of placing before
us, with considerable warmth of colouring, and truth of drawing, the groups which his fancy
assembles, he possesses in an eminent degree—we doubt whether he does not exercise it
even to a faulty excess, when the result is an involuntary idea in our minds, that the whole
scene has been actually copied from some old painting, rather than grown up under the creative
hand of the poet himself. This idea has several times intruded itself on our minds in reading
the ‘Nymphs,’ the first poem in the
collection; the following lines are however free from the objection, and entitled to
praise—they form part of the account of the Dryads.
‘They screen the cuckoo when he sings, and teach The mother blackbird, how to lead astray The unformed spirit of the foolish boy, From thick to thick, from hedge to layery beech, When he would steal the huddled nest away Of yellow bills up-gaping for their food, And spoil the song of the free solitude. And they at sound of the brute insolent horn Hurry the deer out of the dewy morn; And take into their sudden laps with joy The startled hare, that did but peep abroad; And from the trodden road Help the bruised hedge-hog. But when tired, they love The back-turned pheasant hanging from the tree His sunny drapery; And handy squirrel, nibbling hastily, And fragrant-living bee So happy, that he will not move, not he, Without a song; and hidden amorous dove With his deep breath; and bird of wakeful glow Whose louder song is like the voice of life Triumphant o'er death's image, but whose deep Low, lovelier note is like a gentle wife, A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one, Stealing, when day-light's common tasks are done An hour for mother's work, and singing low, While her tired husband and her children sleep.’—p. x.
Our next extract shall be of a different nature, and one perhaps which will be
more generally interesting. It is an address to his son at the age of six years during a
sickness; and must come home, we think, to the feelings of every father.
‘Sleep breathes at last from out thee, My little patient boy, And balmy rest about thee Smooths off the day's annoy. I sit me down and think Of all thy winning ways, Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, That I had less to praise. Thy side-long pillowed meekness, Thy thanks to all that aid, Thy heart, in pain and weakness, Of fancied faults afraid; The little trembling hand That wipes thy quiet tears, These, these are things, that may demand Dread memories for years. Sorrows I've had, severe ones— I will not think of now, And calmly, midst my dear ones, Have wasted with dry brow; But when thy fingers press And pat my stooping head, I cannot bear the gentleness— The tears are in their bed. Ah! first born of thy mother, When life and hope were new, Kind playmate of thy brother, Thy sister, father too: My light, where'er I go, My bird when prison-bound, My hand-in-hand companion—no— My prayers shall hold thee round. To say—“he has departed,”— “His voice—his face—is gone,” To feel impatient hearted, Yet feel we must bear on,— Oh! I could not endure To whisper of such woe, Unless I felt this sleep ensure That it will not be so. Yes, still he's fixed and sleeping! This silence too the while— Its very hush and creeping Seem whispering us a smile— Something divine and dim Seems going by one's ear, Like patting wings of Cherubim— Who say—we've finished here.’—p. xlvii.
We will not spoil the effect of these pleasing stanzas by any verbal criticism,
but we may be allowed without offence to hint to Mr. Hunt, that he might have found the ‘unattractive creed’ a very
consoling one under the sorrows and apprehensions which gave rise to the poem; and therefore,
for the sake of others who may be visited in the same way if not for his own, he should
hesitate before he lifts up his voice to undermine its influence.
But what shall we say of the next poem, addressed to J. Hunt four years old?—surely this must have
been a real effusion for the nursery, and have crept into the volume by accident. ‘Ah, little ranting Johnny, For ever blithe, and bonny, And singing nonny, nonny, With hat just thrown upon ye— Ah Jack, ah Gianni mio, As blithe as laughing Trio. Sir Richard too, you rattler, So christened from the Tatler, My Bacchus in his glory My little cor-di-fiori, My tricksome Puck, my Robin, Who in and out come bobbing As full of feints and frolic as That fibbing rogue Autolycus, And play the graceless robber on Your grave-eyed brother Oberon— Ah, Dick—ah, Dolce Riso, How can you—can you be so?’—p. liii. How master Dick ‘can be so?’ may be matter of wonder; but
it seems to us far more strange, how master Dick's father could be so
ill-advised as to publish nearly a hundred lines such as those last quoted, that have neither
fancy nor prettiness to recommend them, not even homely verity and simplicity to excuse
them—nothing, in short, but affectation and silliness to distinguish them: they are
neither a poet's address to his child, nor a nurse's lullaby—but just what might have
been expected from a pert, forward boarding-school girl in her seventh or eighth year.
Mr. Hunt however delights in such effusions; in the next
page, or hearing a little musical box, he breaks out in this exquisite manner— ‘Hallo—what? where?—what can it be That strikes up so deliciously?— I never in my life—what no! That little tin-box playing so.’ If ‘Master Dick loquitur’ had stood at the head of this poem, there would have
been at least a dramatic propriety in it; and it as we shrewdly suspect, the lines really were
dictated by him, is a little unfatherly to deprive him of the honour of
their production.
But our limits oblige us to have done; we therefore pass over the remainder of
the ‘foliage,’ that we may give our readers a specimen of the
‘evergreens,’ as Mr. Hunt is pleased to
denominate his translations from the poets of antiquity, imagining, we suppose, that copies
however taken would retain the perpetual bloom of their originals. Mr.
Hunt shall here be his own critic. ‘In the translations from Homer my object is to give the intelligent reader, who is no
scholar, a stronger sense of the natural energy of the original, than has yet been furnished
him.’ This is the rule, now for the example; we refer our readers who are scholars to the 253d line of the last book of the Iliad; and those who are not, to the corresponding passage 'in
that elegant mistake of Pope's in two volumes octavo,
called Homer's Iliad. ‘Be quicker—do—and help me, evil children, Down-looking set! Would ye had all been killed Instead of Hector at the ships! Oh me, Curs'd creature that I am! I had brave sons Here in wide Troy, and now I cannot say That one is left me. Mestor like a God And Troilus my fine hearted charioteer, And Hector, who for mortal was a God, For he seemed born not of a mortal man, But of a God—yet Mars has swept them all, And none but these convicted knaves are left me,— Liars and dancers, excellent time-beaters, Notorious pilferers of lambs and goats. Why don't ye get the chariot ready and set The things upon it here, that we may go?—p. 12. We hardly know whether to admire most the spirit or the fidelity of this rendering; but
however good this is, Mr. Hunt is more confident of the other pieces, and
he thinks he may venture to say, that the reader who does not feel something pathetic in the
Cyclops, something sunny and exuberant in the Rural
Journey, and even some of the gentler Greek music in the elegy on the death of Bion, would not be very likely to feel the finer part of it in
the originals. All, however, that he answers for is, that ‘he has felt them himself, like
the sunny atmosphere which they resemble.’ Now for the example again, and it shall be of
the sunny and exuberant kind. ‘Dear Lycidas, cried I, you talk indeed Like one whom all agree, shepherd and reaper, To pipe among them nobly—which delights me— And yet I trust I am your equal too. It is a feast we're going to. Some friends Keep one to day to the well-draperied Ceres, Mother of Earth, and offer their first fruits For gratitude, their garners are so full. But come, as we have lighted on each other, Let us take mutual help, and by the way Pastoralize a little; for my mouth Breathes also of the muse, and people call me Greatest of living song—a praise however Of which I am not credulous—no by earth— For there's Philetas and our Samian too Whom I no more pretend to have surpassed, Than frogs the grasshoppers.—p. 25. Who does not feel a glow reflected on him from the ‘sunny atmosphere’ of these
lines? A few hundred of them carefully packed and hermetically sealed would be a valuable
addition to the stores of the Dorothea and Isabella, if, in spite of our hopes and predictions, they should
chance to be frozen up in the polar basin.
We have done, and we trust Mr. Hunt
‘will pardon us these public compliments for our own sakes, and for sincerity's.’
He possesses talents, which might have made him a useful citizen, and a respectable writer; but
he wants sound principle and Christian humility; and the want of them has made him as a citizen
what we do not like to name, and as a writer only not contemptible because he is sometimes
pernicious. Had he been thoroughly well principled, and properly humble, he might still have
been anxious to improve the taste and manners of his countrymen as well as to correct the
abuses of their government; but he would not have undertaken the task without a due sense of
its difficulty, and a diffidence, at least, of his own ability to perform it. Instead of
rushing with boy-like presumption to his task, he would have passed years in silent study and
diligent observation; instead of panting with womanish impatience for immediate notoriety, and
courting it in the poor publicity of a weekly paper, instead of demanding perpetually-renewed
gratification for a diseased vanity, protruding every fresh fancy crude as it came from the
brain, and sacrificing every thing for the worthless applause of the mob, he would, like
Achilles, have abstained from the battle till he had
possessed himself of the heavenly armour; in the mean time he would have derived ample
enjoyment from his cause, and his conscience, and if he desired any other reward, it would have
been the applause of the few now, and undisputed and immortal fame hereafter. How painful is it
to turn our eyes upon the contrast before us! Mr. Hunt is indeed a most
pitiable man, and whatever he may think or say of us, we do pity him most
sincerely. He began life, we doubt not, with pure and lofty dreams; he must now feel that he
has taken the wrong course, that he can never realize them—he has put on himself his own
trammels, he knows that he has done so, they gall him, but he can never break them. Henceforth
all will be wormwood and bitterness to him: he may write a few more stinging and a few more
brilliant periods, he may slander a few more eminent characters, he may go on to deride
venerable and holy institutions, he may stir up more discontent and sedition, but he will have
no peace of mind within, he will do none of the good he once hoped to do, nor yet have the
bitter satisfaction of doing all the evil he now desires; he will live and die unhonoured in
his own generation, and, for his own sake it is to be hoped, moulder unknown in those which are
to follow.