Stiff hung his nerveless feet: his hands, long spread
Restless amidst the waves, dropp'd numb'd and dead:
Sudden th' involuntary waters rush'd,

And down his gasping throat the brine-floods gush'd;
The bitter wind now quench'd the light above,
And so extinguish'd fled Leander's life and love.-
But while he linger'd still, the watchful maid,
With terrors wavering, on the tower delay'd.
The morning came-no husband met her view:
O'er the wide seas her wandering sight she threw ;
If haply, since the torch was quench'd in shade,
Her bridegroom o'er the waters, devious, stray'd.
When, at the turret's foot, her glance descried
His rock-torn corse cast upward by the tide!
She rent the broider'd robe her breast around,
And headlong from the tower she fell with rushing
sound!-

Thus on her lifeless husband Hero died,

Nor death's last anguish could their loves divide* :

There is great beauty and power in the above, yet, to my fancy, Mr. Leigh Hunt, in his "original poem," has felt parts with as great relish,— he has identified himself more deeply with the lovers. It is really surprising how much freshness and originality is poured around this hackneyed tale; and this he has accomplished by

* Elton's Specimens of the Classic Poets, vol. iii. p. 351.

mentally rejecting in his rough draught, the fullblown flower of Musæus, and brooding over, and developing anew the primitive seed. In so doing some of the antique air necessarily faded, but this loss is more than compensated to the genuine admirers of the spirit in which our old dramas are written, by the additional force with which all the circumstances are brought home to our modern sympathies. Musæus is more classical-Hunt more romantic.—The present writer neither admires the political doctrines of Mr. Hunt, or the occasional flippancy which disfigure his best works, both prose and verse:— but it is impossible for a candid critic not to perceive the simplicity and truth of his "Hero and Leander." Not that it is free from one or two lines and phrases, which afflict the sensitive mind like a vulgar flourish introduced into Arne's "Water parted from the Sea," or "This Cold Flinty Heart" in Cymon, but they are so immediately redeemed, that they are, as it were, perforce, forgiven and forgotten. I cannot resist a few specimens; the more especially as bring

ing out any unjustly neglected poem, jumps with the original intention of this Series; and I may truly say with old Izaac Walton, that these smooth verses please me better than many of the strong lines now in fashion. This little

Erotic romance is so short that, if the eyes were not dazzled by thick-bubbling tears, the whole might be perused in ten minutes; however the reader needs not be alarmed, for my intention is only by glimpses of its beauties to provoke him to the purchase of the book*.-Hunt with his

"Hero and Leander, and Bacchus and Ariadne,” two original poems, by Leigh Hunt, 12mo. 1819. The lay of the Panther, at the end, (taken from Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana) is worth the total cost. The essence of youth flames and dances in its elastic lines.—The old legend of Ariadne, too, is very originally embodied,—the opening is “wet with roarie may-dews,”—it is drowned in the cool gray air of dawn.

"The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking, When Ariadue in her bower was waking;

Her eyelids still were closing, and she heard
But indistinctly yet a little bird,

That in the leaves o'erhead, waiting the sun,
Seemed answering another distant one.

с

characteristic love of "leafy luxuries," has insisted rather on the heart-gladdening site of "Venus' Church" than on its architectural decorations-his description is summery, yet "mild

as the mist of the hill in the day of the sun."

"The hour of worship's over; and the flute

And choral voices of the girls are mute;

All, all is still about the odorous grove

That wraps the temple of the Queen of Love,
All but the sparrows twittering from the eaves,
And inward voice of doves among the leaves,
And the cool, hiding noise of brooks in bowers,
And bees, that dart in bosoms of the flowers;
And now and then, a breath-increasing breeze
That comes amid a world of tumbling trees,
And makes them pant and shift against the light
About the marble roof, solid and sunny bright.-
Only some stragglers loiter round the place
To catch a glimpse of Hero's heavenly face,-

(Note continued.)

She waked, but stirred not, only just to please
Her pillow-nestling cheek; while the full seas,
The birds, the leaves, the lulling love o'ernight,
The happy thought of the returning light,

conspired to keep

Her senses lingering in the feel of sleep."

At last she comes,

*

Bringing a golden torch;—and so with pace
A little slackened, and still rosier face,
Passes their looks; and turning by a bower,
Hastens to hide her in her lonely tower.

The tower o'erlooks the sea; and there she sits
Grave with glad thoughts, and watching it by fits;
For o'er that sea, and by that torch's light,

Her love Leander is to come at night,—

So she sat fix'd, thinking, and thinking on,

And wish'd, and yet did not, the time were gone;-
And started then, and blushed, and then was fain
To try some work, and then sat down again;
And lost to the green trees with their sweet singers,
Tapp'd on the casement's ledge with idle fingers."

The ensuing evening piece seems written in the glowing "South Countrie," "the land of the beautiful blossoms:"-The last two lines remind one of Chaucer

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Hesper meanwhile, the star with amorous eye
Shot his fine sparkle from the deep blue sky.
A depth of night succeeded, dark but clear,
Such as presents the hollow starry sphere,
Like a high gulf to Heaven: and all above
Seems waking to a fervid fire of love.