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.

may

demand

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
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 parting 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

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 be visited in the same way if not for his own, he should hesitate before he lifts up his voice to undermine its influence.

may

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 Jullaby-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, on hearing a little musical box, he breaks out in this exquisite man

ner

'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 if, as we shrewdly suspect, the lines really were dictated by him, it

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' ure 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,