Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 4

"The evening weather was so bright, and clear, That men of health were of unusual cheer."[165]

"Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than the ring-dove's cooings."[166]

"The lamps that from the high roof'd wall were pendant And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent."[167]

"Or on the wavy gra.s.s outstretch'd supinely, Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely."[168]

The following are infelicitous pa.s.sages reflecting Leigh Hunt's bad taste, especially in the description of physical appearance, or of situations involving emotion:

"... what amorous and fondling nips They gave each other's cheeks."[169]

"... some lady sweet Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet."[170]

"Rein in the swelling of his ample might."[171]

"Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches."[172]

"... What a kiss, What gentle squeeze he gave each lady's hand!

How tremblingly their delicate ankles spann'd!

Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone, While whisperings of affection Made him delay to let their tender feet Come to the earth; with an incline so sweet From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent: And whether there were tears of languishment, Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses, He felt a moisture on his cheek and blesses With lips that tremble, and with glistening eye, All the soft luxury That nestled in his arms."[173]

"... Add too, the sweetness Of thy honey'd voice; the neatness Of thine ankle, lightly turned: With those beauties, scarce discern'd Kept with such sweet privacy, That they seldom meet the eye Of the little loves that fly Round about with eager pry."[174]

Descriptive pa.s.sages in the Huntian style are not infrequent: the opening lines from the _Imitation of Spenser_[175] are much nearer to Hunt than to Spenser.

"Now morning from her orient chamber came, And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill, Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill; Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distil And after parting beds of simple flowers, By many streams a little lake did fill, Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, And in its middle s.p.a.ce, a sky that never lowers."[176]

These lines of _Calidore_ show a like resemblance:

"He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky, And smiles at the far clearness all around, Until his heart is well nigh over wound, And turns for calmness to the pleasant green Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean So elegantly o'er the waters' brim And show their blossoms trim."[177]

A third is:

"Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water."

Single phrases showing the influence of Hunt[178] are: "airy feel,"

"patting the flowing hair," "A Man of elegance," "sweet-lipped ladies,"

"grateful the incense," "modest pride," "a sun-beamy tale of a wreath,"

"soft humanity," "leafy luxury," "pillowy silkiness," "swelling apples,"

"the very pleasant rout," "forms of elegance."

The following pa.s.sages apparently bear as close a resemblance to each other as it is possible to find by the comparison of individual pa.s.sages from the works of the two men:

"The sidelong view of swelling leafiness Which the glad setting sun in gold doth dress"[179]

compare with:

"And every hill, in pa.s.sing one by one Gleamed out with twinkles of the golden sun: For leafy was the road, with tall array."[180]

The _Epistles_ are strikingly like Hunt's epistles in spirit, diction and metre. Mr. Colvin has pointed out that the one addressed _To George Felton Mathew_ was written in November, 1815, before Keats had met Hunt and before the publication of the latter's epistles;[181] but Keats may have known them at the time in ma.n.u.script through Clarke. The resemblances may also have been due, in part, as in other points of comparison, to an innate similarity of thought and feeling.

That Hunt's habit of sonneteering and his preference for the Petrarcan form influenced Keats, is attested by the similarity of the latter's sonnets to Hunt's in form, subjects, and allusions, and by the direct references[182] to Hunt. _On the Gra.s.shopper and the Cricket_[183] and _To the Nile_[184] were written in contest with Hunt. _To Spenser_ is a refusal to comply with Hunt's request that he should write a sonnet on Spenser.[185] The t.i.tle of _On Leigh Hunt's Poem, The Story of Rimini_[186] speaks for itself.[187]

To put it briefly, the _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influence in more ways than any equal number of the young poet's later verses. It is seen in Keats's subject matter[188] and allusions; in his adoption of a colloquial style and diction; in his absorption of Hunt's spirit in the treatment of nature and in his att.i.tude toward women; and in his imitation and exaggerated use of the free heroic couplet in _Sleep and Poetry_, _I stood tiptoe_, _Specimen of an Induction_ and other poems.

Of the poem _Lines on seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair_, written in January, 1818, Keats wrote in a letter to Bailey: "I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of _Milton's hair_. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is--as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book.... This I did at Hunt's, at his request--perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home."[189] Leigh Hunt's three sonnets on the same subject, published in _Foliage_, have been already spoken of in the preceding chapter.

_Endymion_ shows a decided decrease in the ascendancy of Hunt's mind over Keats, for the sway of his intellectual supremacy had been shaken before suspicions arose in Keats's mind as to the disinterestedness of his motives. What influence lingers is seen in the general theory of versification and in the diction, with some trace in matters of taste. A marvellous luxury of imagery, glimpses into the heights and depths of nature, an absorbing love of Greek fable, a deeper infusion of the ideal have superseded what Mr. Colvin has called the "sentimental chirp" of Hunt.[190] Specific pa.s.sages in _Endymion_ reminiscent of Hunt are rare, but Book III, ll. 23-30 recalls the general descriptive style in the _Descent of Liberty_ and summarizes in a few lines pages of Hunt's diffuse, spectacular imagery. Once or twice Keats seems to have fallen into the colloquial manner in dialogue:

"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 trespa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sion--"[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 pa.s.sage 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]

The peculiarities of Keats's diction are, in the main, two-fold, and may each be traced to a direct influence: first, archaisms in the manner of Spenser[199] and Chatterton; second, colloquialisms and deliberate departures from established usage in the employment and formation of words, in imitation of Leigh Hunt. Keats's theory so far as he had one, is set forth in a pa.s.sage in one of his letters: "I shall never become attached to a foreign idiom, so as to put it into my writings. The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language.

It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think--or what ought to be the purest--is Chatterton's."[200]

Keats's _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influence in diction more strongly than any of his later works. In the majority of instances, this influence is reflected in the principles of usage rather than in the actual usages, although words and phrases used by Hunt are occasionally found in the writings of Keats. The tendency to a colloquial vocabulary is seen in such words and combinations as jaunty, right glad, balmy pain, leafy luxury,[201] delicious,[202] tasteful, gentle doings, gentle livers, soft floatings, frisky leaps, lawny mantle, patting, busy spirits. Among these words, leafy, balmy, lawny, patting, nest, tiptoe, and variations of "taste" were special favorites with Hunt. A few expressions only of this kind, as "nest," "honey feel," "infant's gums," are found in _Endymion_, and almost none at all in the later poems.

Keats used peculiar words with so much greater felicity and in so much greater profusion than Hunt, exceeding in richness and individuality of vocabulary most of the poets of his own time, that one is forced to believe that Spenser's influence rather than Hunt's was dominant here.

Breaches of taste are confined almost entirely to the _Poems_ of 1817.

Ordinary words used peculiarly include "nips" (they gave each other's cheeks), "core" (for heart) and "luxury"[203] (with a wrong connotation), nouns and adjectives employed as verbs, and verbs as nouns and adjectives.

These devices likewise cannot be credited to Hunt without reservation, since both Spenser and Milton used them; but there is little doubt that in this instance Hunt was an inciting and sustaining influence. Keats resorted to such artifices frequently and continued to do so to the end.

Instances of nouns and adjectives employed as verbs are: pennanc'd, luting, pa.s.sion'd, neighbour'd, syllabling, companion'd, labrynth, anguish'd, poesied, vineyard'd, woof'd, loaned, medicin'd, zon'd, mesh, pleasure, legion'd, companion, green'd, gordian'd, character'd, finn'd, forest'd, tusk'd, monitor. Verbs employed as nouns and adjectives are: shine, which occurs five times, feel, seeing, hush, pry and amaze.

More examples of coined compounds, nouns and adjectives, are to be found in Keats than in Hunt; in his better work as well as in his early productions. A few are: cirque-couchant, milder-mooned, tress-lifting, flitter-winged, silk-pillowed, death-neighing, break-covert, palsy-twitching, high-sorrowful, sea-foamy, amber-fretted, sweet-lipped, lush-leaved.

The last principle is the coining, or choice of, adjectives in _y_ and _ing_; of adverbs in _ly_, when, in many instances, adjectives and adverbs already existed formed on the same stem. The frequent use of words with these weak endings gives a very diffuse effect at times in Keats's early poems. The following are examples: fenny, fledgy, rushy, lawny, liny, nervy, pipy, paly, palmy, towery, sluicy, surgy, sc.u.mmy, mealy, sparry, heathy, rooty, slumbery, bowery, bloomy, boundly, palmy, surgy, spermy, ripply, spangly, spherey, orby, oozy, skeyey, clayey, and plashy.[204]

Adjectives in _ing_ are: cheering, hushing, breeding, combing, dumpling, sphering, tenting, toying, baaing, far-spooming, peering (hand), searing (hand), shelving, serpenting. Adverbs are: scantly, elegantly, refreshingly, freshening (lave), hoveringly, greyly, cooingly, silverly, refreshfully, whitely, drowningly, wingedly, sighingly, windingly, bearingly.