Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor
a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was
a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe,
optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who
has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer.
I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since
his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as
extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in
this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist
may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for
inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist.
Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than
the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies,
and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use.
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