"
Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is
extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream,
was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without
questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but
infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities.
He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how
to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head.
In "Hero and Leander" there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth
any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
So might they now have lived, and so have died;
_The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side_.
Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on
everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel"
are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a
handful.
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