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MONTHLY OBSERVATIONS.

With a Catalogue of all really British
Plants, as they come into Flower.

NOVEMBER.

The shortened days, cold and raw weather, with sometimes heavy rains, that soak the land and swell the brooks, so powerfully affect the mind, that this month has passed into a proverb for its gloom. The body becomes irritable, the mind, in consequence, fretful; and, forgetting that external things are sealed up from us, that we may apply our minds to those which are within; it is common for men to use stimulants to enable themselves to while away that time, which might be employed in securing immortal trea

sures.

Winter, which in the economy of nature may be regarded as beginning

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driven upon the shore. Many species of small birds frequent watery places, for the purpose of collecting insects, which chiefly abound in such situations; and wagtails and tillocks are seen wading through brooks, and along the margin of the sea, for the same purpose. About the end of the month, the fall of the leaf is completed; and the trees are left with naked branches, a mournful spectacle to the contemplative eye; yet, it is the most proper condition, in which they can encounter the storms of winter; as by offering the least resistance to the wind, they are exposed to the least injury.

The flowers of the former months still linger, but none now come into bloom. This was the miz diu, or black month of our ancestors.

in this month, sometimes shews itself OUR METROPOLITAN SCHOOL OF POETS. at the commencement, if not by the

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thermometer, at least by human feel- No. 1.-The Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt. ings and the evaporation of a large quantity of moisture, with the wind at the north-east, is the cause of colds and pulmonary diseases, which are very apt to prevail at this season. Forced by cold, wet, and hunger, from their hiding places, rats and mice, that have been wandering about in the midst of plenty, through the summer, enter houses in great numbers; and, for some time, cats, gins, and poison, are required to keep them from doing mischief. Those creatures which become torpid in winter, begin to keep at home, except in those fine days, which even this gloomy month sometimes affords.

"I am monarch of all I survey.”—COWPER. THERE is a peculiar propriety in thus introducing Mr. H. as number one, merely in reference to the singularity and egotism of his writings. He is, in truth, the centre of a system, and sheds his own light on all he looks upon. His men and women, his horses, his trees, his ships, trumpeters, summerhouses, hawks, thoughts, feelings, sentiments, and expressions, are all perfectly his own, perfectly original, for "their like were never seen" before in nature or in books. He sheds over every object which he touches the spirit of his own imagination, and in his hands nobility becomes common, grandeur low, feeling vulgar, and simplicity contemptible. He does not

Fishes, which visit us from warm climates, now leave our coasts; these are the garpike, skipper or saury, mackarel, &c.; but they are sometimes seen even to the middle of De-possess a Midas-like faculty, for every cember. Farmers begin to thrash out barley, that cattle may have the straw, the fields being, at this time, bare of grass; and, on the sea coast, they are watching every opportunity to collect the sea weeds for manure, as they are No. 33. VOL. III.

thing he touches is converted into dross. There is not throughout the whole compass of his writings (and we challenge our readers to produce a single instance of it) one passage which bears the stamp of a great mind. 3 Q

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Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt.

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Affectation and conceit are little vices | observation; if he is to dress the

miserable specimens of mortality which he sees around him, in a poetical garb, baptize them with some Italian name, endue them with the thoughts and feelings, which, in his opinion, are such as generally arise in the human mind, the world will hardly feel indebted to him for the labour he has expended.

-they are the errors of diminutive intellects--they are passions, which are intended to supply, in a man's own eyes, that importance which the world will never yield him. The truly high and magnificent mind, is often conscious of the possession of powers, to which the sickly abilities of Mr. Leigh Hunt are as a wart to Ossa, and One of our Poet's stoutest opinions, yet bears itself with an unoffending and in which he seems to entrench dignity, which doubles the world's himself very resolutely, is, that we respect; while the importunate egot-have no need of a better nature than ism of a conceited mind sinks the pos- we at present possess. "The image sessor even beneath the world's contempt. All the splendour of Milton's great mind, shone forth in those words of his, in which he declared, that it had ever been his hope and conviction "that by labour and intense study, joined with the strong propensity of nature, he might leave something, so written, to after times, that they should not willingly let it die." Does a spirit like this animate the labours of Mr. Leigh Hunt?

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of a glorious human creature," is, in his idea, the most perfect image which can be imagined. He has no wish, no eye, for a purer, higher existence. He is earth-bound, and would not exchange his prison for an Eden. The cant of humanity runs throughout all his works. There is, moreover, in all this, something too much of "Epicu rus' Sty," and, in reading such passages, we cannot help thinking of the spirit and words of Comus, which, we shall not pay so poor a compliment to our readers as to quote. Nobody can accuse H. of severity and austere principles in his writings, and we thus never find him “praising the lean and sallow abstinence." There is little of moral truth in any thing that he says, except indeed, that he inculcates the principle of happiness and enjoyment, and even there he mistakes the means of gaining them.

In all his Poetry, Mr. Leigh Hunt's chief aim is to level himself to what he calls the truth of nature. This he accomplishes, but it is unfortunately to his own nature, that he renders every thing conformable. Now, nature is the simplicity of naked truth, and true nature is perfect propriety. Poetry, like every thing else, has a nature of its own, not the nature of common life, or of common feelings, but something infinitely above both. But, dismissing the question of the The beings of a poetical world are not useful tendency of his Poems, it bethe same, either in flesh or spirit, with comes us to inquire a little more parany mortal mixture of earth's mould." ticularly into his merits as an author. They are of a race above mankind, It is difficult, at first, to say on what sublimer in sentiments, purer in pur-models he has formed his style; but, pose, more powerful in action, and on further examination, we may disloftier in language: their passions, cover that he has paid considerable indeed, are lighted at that fire, which attention to our older Poets, particukindles the human affections, but then larly Shakspeare, and amongst those they burn with a brilliancy which is of a later age, to Dryden. His style not of the earth. In virtue, in weak- may fairly be said to be formed from ness, and in wickedness, the children an imitation of these two Poets, though of Poetry rise above the passions of he has, perhaps, added sufficient of mortality. To this more elevated his own, to entitle him to some originnature, every other component part ality. This imitation, by the bye, is of Poetry should be rendered conform- the great characteristic of the Metroable. It is in the infancy of art only, politan School. They have ransacked that we observe those painful and the wardrobes of our elder Dramatists minute imitations of nature, which and Poets, and they now walk into render the works of the early painters public with a ruff round their necks, almost ridiculous. If Mr. Leigh Hunt and a splendid cloak, like that Sir Walundertakes, merely to give us a faith-ter Raleigh spread before Queen ful representation of that nature which Elizabeth, dangling over a pair of comes immediately under his own Cossack trowsers, and Wellington

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Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt.

boots. The incongruity of the thing is evident and ridiculous.

In his love for the homeliness of nature, nothing is too low or common for Mr. Leigh Hunt; any vulgar sentence or simile, which he imagines to be pretty expressive, he presses into his service without hesitation; and these have, evidently, not crept into his Poetry fortuitously, but have been diligently sought for, to give it an air of truth and nature. The instances which his poems contain are almost innumerable.-Thus:

"A pin-drop silence strikes o'er all the place,
He kept no reck'ning with his sweets and sours,
Yet somehow or another, on that day,
Baungin, what bustle's that I seem to hear?"

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"He was not slow in common To accept the attentions of this lovely woman." Francesca appears to be a lady after Mr. Leigh Hunt's own heart. A lovely woman in a rural spot.” "The two divinest things the world has got,

Francesca, too, was, like Hunt, a lover of nature,

"For in all things with nature did she hold," so much so, that having worked a knot for Prince Giovanni,

"While 'twas being worked, her fancy was Of sunbeams mingling with a tuft of grass," videlicet, it was of green and gold!

The meeting of the two brothers, their deadly quarrel and combat, is perhaps the weakest part of the story of Rimini. It is all told in that maud

Besides this strange homeliness of phrase, Mr. L. H.'s vulgarity extends through whole passages, or, more pro-lin style of affected feeling, which has perly, through his whole writings.What a picture have we here! "There talking with the ladies you may see Standing about, or sealed, frank and free, Some of the finest warriors of the court."

RIM. p. 8.

If our readers have never had the good fortune to see the band of the horse-guards mounted on their grey horses, they have not seen what Mr. Leigh Hunt evidently has.

"First come the trumpeters clad all in white, Except the breast, which wears a scutcheon bright,

By four and four they ride on horses grey,
And as they sit along their easy way,
Stately and heaving to the sway below,
Each plants his trumpet on his saddle bow."
RIM. p. 8, 12.
The two brothers in Rimini are por-
traits in Mr. L. Hunt's best style, of
nature, or its caricature.

"Giovanni was the graver, Paulo the livelier, and the more in favour."

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no effect upon the heart of the reader. Giovanni, the injured and offended brother, very leisurely dresses,' takes his “sword," and seeks his brother. "His squire awaked, attends," and they go to his brother's room." "His squire calls him up too,” and they come forth, like modern Frenchmen, on a point of honour, discussing the question,

"May I request, Sir, said the Prince, and frown'd

Your ear a moment in the tilting ground."

Giovanni on the tilting ground addresses his brother thus,

"Before you answer what you can, I wish to tell you as a gentleman, That what you may confess (and as he spoke His voice with breathless and pale passion broke,)

Will implicate no person known to you."

The death of Paulo is not told in much better style, and we can hardly

though we certainly feel inclined to sympathize with Francesca, who dies prefer the former, for

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just as Mr. Leigh Hunt might be supposed to wish her. Duke Guido, however, the father of the Princess, excites a good deal of commiseration, for, "He lost his old wits for ever."

It may, perhaps, be objected to us, that the few quotations we have made, are not fair specimens of Mr. Leigh Hunt's Poetry; there are other passages, we confess, not so exceptionable, but we have selected these, as giving the liveliest idea of some of this gentleman's peculiarities. The writer of an article in one of our Metropolitan Magazines (and, we think, we can trace the hand of one of Mr. H.'s

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Death and Character of Mr. Rowland Hassall.

disciples in it,) has ventured to come pare that gentleman's productions with the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medici. Can we read such things "without our special wonder !!!" Is the blameless beauty of antiquity's highest efforts, to be drawn into comparison with the nauseous overflowings of Mr. Leigh Hunt's perverted imaginations? In his whole composition, there is not one single spark of the chaste classical severity of Grecian song. He runs through Tooke's Pantheon, and babbles of gods and goddesses, and dresses up an ancient story in modern garments; but he has not the slightest idea of the spirit of antiquity.

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conceit and a true poetic spirit are essentially distinct. Such a Poet may be the master of a new school, the idol of a coterie, or the fashion of a day, but he has no claim to a relationship with fame and with posterity.

(To be concluded in our next.),

DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MR.
ROWLAND HASSALL.

From the Sydney Gazette, 1820.

ON the night of Monday last, the 28th of August, died at his house at Parramatta, after a few days illness, Mr. Rowland Hassall, in the 52d year of his age. In the death of this gentleman, society has lost a most pious and benevolent member; and his large and young family, a tender husband, a kind father, and a good man. Mr. Hassall was one of the first Missionaries sent to the Society Islands; and when the gentlemen of that Mission

We will venture to say, Mr. L. Hunt never lost himself in the feelings which his subject excited; he is never overcome, even by enthusiasm; one idea is always at the top of all the rest; that it becomes him to write something Leigh Huntish and natural, but it must bear his own stamp first, and nature's after. He is determined to notice things which other people have neg-were compelled to fly from the Islands lected, to describe things which others have despised, and to use words which others have never heard of. If it were not for this perpetual straining, this attempt to create a new nature expressly for the use of Mr. Leigh Hunt, this firm resolve, not only to say new things, but to say them, moreover, in a new way, his Poetry might be pleasing, for, after all, there is a sort of quickness of perception about it, and an ease, and sometimes a power of description, which display considerable merit. By no chance, however, could he become a great Poet, for he is far from what Aristotle calls μeyaλavкog; he is certainly not high-souled, and his Poetry partakes of the voluptuousness and animal qualities of the Epicurean's, rather than the grandeur and sternness of the Stoic's philosophy. Thus he may, in some degree, succeed in describing beautiful objects and picturesque scenery with effect, as well as the lighter, finer, and more transient feelings of the human heart; but when he comes to deal with the intensity of the passions, to search the depths of the soul, and to express such feelings as fill the heart of Byron, he finds the strings of his weak and slender lyre miserably unstrung. Deep feeling disdains affectation. Mr. Leigh Hunt cannot serve two such masters

to this Colony, he settled here. For nearly twenty years' residence in this Colony, his life was a continual example of genuine religion and piety, extensive benevolence, and hospitality, He never lost sight of his original designation as a Missionary, and continued to the latest period of his life zealously to perform the duties of one, by preaching the Gospel in almost all parts of the Colony. His latter end was full of peace; and as he lived, so he died, encouraged and supported by the hopes and consolation of religion. To his afflicted widow, and large family of children, and grand-children, the lustre and worth of his character must be a consolation and example, well calculated to support and encourage them under the great loss they have sustained in his death. His remains were interred at Parramatta, amidst the regret of his very numerous friends and acquaintances, on the evening of Wednesday the 30th ult.

ANECDOTE OF MR. HERVEY.

FOR some years before the death of this great man, he visited very few of the principal persons in his neighbourhood. Being once asked, Why he so seldom went to see the neighbouring

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