LEIGH HUNT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 19

LEIGH HUNT

-"THE MAN IS MEMOEABLB."

"The Man is Memorable," writes one dealing with the poetry of Leigh Hunt, in "The Westminster Gazette." The writer goes on:—"For one thing; he was the surest critic of poetry whom England had in the last century. He recognised the genius of Keata; and h« also recognised the genius of CoventryPatmore,' and of Rossetti ("an unquestionable poet"); he wrote one of the most^ amusing autobiographies in -. the English language; he worked almost as hard, though not with so much scholarship, as the estimable Southey—and he wrote poems.. Even those of us who love "The Jar of' Honey" "or the "Autobiography" have always been a little shy of appreciating Leigh Hunt's poetry. Poetry which made even the i young Keble indignant, poetry whose peculiar qualities so enraged the more stupid contemporary critics that' they could not see the beauty, of the poetry of Hunt's friends, poetry which produced in such bulk, and poetry so easily occasioned.

The long poems—"Kimini" especially —are better than their reputation; but they do not demand to be read. Leigh ; Hunt was an easy writer; he evidently enjoyed his liquid; loose lines with their easy rhymes and indeterminate ends. I can see him as he writes "Rimini" or "Bacchus and Ariadne," or "The Gentle Armour," snapping his fingers at the malicious.spirit of Pope, defying his close and careful couplets. . . ■. It is, however, his briefer pieces which establish Hunt's claim to be a poet. "Jenny Kiss'd Me," is in all the anthologies; and deserves to be; and there are other things which deserve to go be^ side it. There is, for instance, the son- ■ net to the Nile:— "It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things,' as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands— Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing queen who caught the ,' world's great hands." The sestet is inferior —and there are flaws in the octave; but there is dignity, and a delicacy and solemnity of phrase, not unworthy of Hunt's great friend Keats.