to cut up with the small knives the poem of Rimini. Let us hasten to take one glance at the real business of the piece,—the incest of Paolo and Francesca. All the preparations for the actual sin are invented by our Poet "in his own fine free way." The scene is in a little antique temple adorned by sculpture, and had Mr Hunt filled his freezes with funeral processions, or with the agonies of Orestes, or the despair of Œdipus, we might indeed have acknowledged that there was some propriety in his fancy. But as he has made of his temple a bagnio, so is its furniture conceived in the very spirit of the place.
"And on a line with this ran round-about,
A like relief, touched exquisitely out,
That shewed, in various scenes, the nymphs themselves;
Some by the water side, on bowery shelves,
Leaning at will—some in the water, sporting
With sides half swelling forth, and looks of courting,—
Some in a flowery dell, hearing a swain
Play on his pipe till the hills ring again,—
Some tying up their long moist hair,—some sleeping
Under the trees, with fauns and satyrs peeping,—
Or, sidelong-eyed, pretending not to see
The latter, in the brakes come creepingly;
While their forgotten urns, lying about
In the green herbage, let the water out.
Never, be sure, before or since was seen
A summer-house so fine in such a nest of green."
We do not remember any thing in the whole of Hunt's writings worse, than the allusion in these verses to the well known song of the Pitchers of Coleraine.
How inferior is the conception of the time to that scene of moon-light mystery which we have already quoted from Parasina.
"One day,—'twas on a summer afternoon,
When airs and gurgling brooks are best in tune,
And grasshoppers are loud, and day-work done,
And shades have heavy outlines in the sun,[1]—
The princess came to her accustomed bower
To get her, if she could, a soothing hour,
Trying, as she was used, to leave her cares
Without, and slumberously enjoy the airs,
And the low-talking leaves, and that cool light
The vines let in, and all that hushing sight
Of closing wood seen thro' the opening door,
And distant flash of waters tumbling o'er,
And smell of citron blooms, and fifty luxuries more.—"
But all this is nothing to the forebodings and presentiments, with which he skilfully represents the mind of Francesca as being filled, when she approaches in silence the scene of her infamy. The indecent attitudes of the nymphs on the cornice, can only be equalled by the blasphemous allusion to the history of our first parents, in depicting the thoughts of this incipient adulteress.
"She tried, as usual, for the trial's sake,
For even that diminished her heart-ache;
And never yet, how ill soe'er at ease,
Came she for nothing 'midst the flowers and trees.
Yet somehow or another, on that day,
She seem'd to feel too lightly borne away,—
Too much reliev'd,—too much inclined to draw
A careless joy from every thing she saw,
And looking round her with a new-born eye,
As if some tree of knowledge had been nigh,
To taste of nature, primitive and free,
And bask at ease in her heart's liberty."
The incidents following this are all from Dante, but we shall endeavour to show, with some minuteness, how much the austere and simple Florentine has been obliged to the elegant rendering of the Cockney poet.
The bold genius of Dante never touched on ground more dangerous, than when he ventured to introduce into his poem the most dismal catastrophe which had ever befallen the family of his patron. Guido di Polento, Lord of Ravenna, the most generous friend of the Poet, had a lovely daughter, Francesca, who was betrothed in early years to Paolo Malatesta, a younger brother of the house of Rimini, and a perfect model of graceful chivalry; but afterwards compelled, by domestic tyranny, to become the wife of the elder brother of her lover, Lanciotto, a man savage in character, and deformed in person. The early flame, however, was not to be repressed, and the unfortunate sequel of their history is that which is so tenderly touched upon in the Inferno, and so diluted and debased in the Story of Rimini.
In the course of his perambulation of hell, the poet feigns that he came to one scene of misery entirely set apart for those who had fallen the victims of unlawful love. Among these he observes Semiramis, Helen, and Cleopatra; Achilles, Paris, and Tristram. But while he is yet gazing, with mingled fear and sorrow, on these
- ↑ This close imitation of Crabbs cannot escape observation.
