his own, he resorts, when anything is mentioned, not to the thing itself, but to the terms in which it has been mentioned by the writers with whom he is most familiar. He does not translate his author's thoughts, but his words; or rather, he attempts only to do even that; for on that very account, he does neither. To feel either properly, is to feel both.

We are greatly tempted to make many more extracts from Fairfax; but we must restrain ourselves. In further illustration of what we have said about the lines which he has inserted of his own, or altered to his own ideas, and the sympathy which he still keeps up with his author's feelings, we will just refer to his calling Armida, when she sets off (4 v. 27), the Syrians' "night-ambling dame," to the two lines (2. v. 26) in which he calls Sophronia, in the hands of the malefactors, a "dumb" and "silver dove ;"-to the neighing of the horses, and clattering of arms, (1. v. 73), which, he says

"Pursue the echo over dale and downe;"

to the description of Armida (4. v. 29), in which, with a little over-mixture of conceit, yet beautiful, he tells us—

"The marble goddesse, set at Gnidos naked,

She seem'd, were she uncloath'd, or that awaked ;"

and to the issuing forth of the devils (4. v. 18), which as the stanza is almost entirely his own as well as a fine one, and crowded with his favourite love of demonology, we shall quote entire

"Before his words the tyrant ended had,
The lesser devils arose with gastlie rore,
And throng'd foorth about the world to gad;
Each land they fill'd, river, streame, and shore;
The goblins, fairies, feends, and furies mad,
Ranged in flowrie dales and mountains hore;
And under every trembling leaf they sit,
Between the solid earth and walkin flit."

The faults of Fairfax are partly his own, and partly those of the period then commencing. They consist in too great a licence of invention; occasional crampness and obscurity; an

over-tendency to contrast; and in a singular fondness for occupying a line here and there either with epithets almost synonymous, or with a marked detail of nouns, which close his stanza like palisades; as, for instance

"The soil was gentle, smooth, soft, delicate

With pitie, sadness, griefe, compassion, feare."

Yet we are not sure whether this kind of repetition does not fall in sometimes with a certain gentle and continuous beauty. It is clear, at any rate, that the Italians, from a feeling of that sort, gave rise to it themselves, though Fairfax has carried it to an excess. Petrarch and his followers sometimes heap a line with descriptive nouns or adjectives; and that delightful wild fellow Pulsi seems to take a pleasure even in repeating a multitude of notes of interrogation, and beginning a whole stanza or more with the same word. The over-tendency to contrast may also be traced to the Italians, especially as Marino was now becoming admired in England, and everybody had not strength to resist his crowding syrens like Milton. The other faults are perhaps owing to Fairfax's having chosen to abide by the stanza of the original; for, not being so great a master of his native language as Spenser, who with his additional line seemed to defy difficulty in this respect, and too often to no purpose, he hampered himself with the great recurrence of rhymes, which suits Italian much better than English. He was also, though by no means the literal translator which Hume has made him, naturally anxious in general to get the sense of his original into the same compass, which hampered him farther; and the result of all this, joined no doubt to a natural inferiority in his own genius, however true a one, is, that he is not equal to his original in the easier part of his majesty,-in his clearness, which is like that of an Italian atmosphere,—and in a certain virgin sweetness, casta melodia soave;—in short, he is inferior, generally speaking, in simplicity.

But, on the other hand, he has great beauties. If he roughened the music of Tasso a little, he still kept it music, and

beautiful music; some of his stanzas, indeed, give the sweetness of the original with the still softer sweetness of an echo; and he blew into the rest some noble, organ-like notes, which perhaps the original is too deficient in. He can be also quite as stately and solemn in feeling ;—he is as fervid in his devotion, as earnest and full of ghastly apprehension in his supernatural agency, as wrapt up in leafiness in his sylvan haunts, as luxuriant and alive to tangible shapes in his voluptuousness. He feels the elements and varieties of his nature, like a true poet; and his translation has consequently this special mark of all true poetry, translated or original-that when the circumstances in the story or description alter, it gives us a proper and pervading sense of the alteration. The surfaces are not all coloured alike, as in a bad and monotonous picture. We have no silken armour, as in Pope's eternal enamel; nor iron silks, as in Chapman (who is perhaps the only other various translator nevertheless); nor an everlasting taste of chips instead of succulence, as in the Ariosto of Harrington.

We repeat, however, that the reader must not expect a perfect version in Fairfax, much less at the outset. Tasso himself, in our opinion, does not well warm you into his work till after several books; but set out resolutely with him or his translator, or with both, get past some cold-looking places, and scratch through a few of Fairfax's roughnesses and obscurities, and you come upon a noble territory, full of the romantic and the sweet, of stately and of lovely shapes, of woods, waters, and sunny pleasures, with drearier seclusions apart, and fields of sonorous battle. We do not wonder that Collins was fond of this author and his translator, since Johnson has told us, in that piece of prose music of his, that “he loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters,”—that "he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." Collins has given Fairfax a high and proud eulogy in his "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands." Speaking of Tasso, he says:

"How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind,
To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung,
Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind

Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

And then he goes on in a strain of softness and luxury that seem imitated from the countryman he is praising. Yet Collins, be it observed, was an accomplished scholar, and quite conversant with the merits of the original. Indeed, that was one great cause of his eulogy. Waller, who appears to have known Italian, and Dryden, who undoubtedly did so, were both great admirers of Fairfax. Waller professed to have "derived the harmony of his numbers" from him; and so did Dryden, if a reported speech of his to the Duke of Buckingham is to be taken for granted. He gives him high praise at any rate, and joins him with Spenser as "great masters in our language." But his greatest title to regard on the score of authority comes from Milton, who, when he borrowed from Tasso, took care to look at Fairfax also, and to add now and then something from him by the way.

NOTE.-Leith Hunt was unfortunate in the poets he instanced as being "gone" (i.e., dead) when Hoole's work appeared. The translation was given to the public in 1763, and at that time all the poets mentioned in the passage in question were living, with the single exception of Collins; and some had several years to live. Nor is it a well-chosen expression to say that Cowper was "surviving." He was a young man, who had not begun his career as a poet, and was quite unknown to the public. -ED.]

THE END.

THE LEIGH HUNT MEMORIAL.

(Vide Frontispiece.)

The following was the Prospectus issued :—

LEIGH HUNT.

"He was buried at Kensal Green, but, unhappily, there is, as yet, no monument to record his name and preserve his memory. That is a reproach to all who knew him, and to all who have read, admired, and loved his many works-a generation that reaps the harvest of his labours. His works will, indeed, do both-they will be his monument-more enduring than any of 'piled up stones'-and they will preserve his name for ever among the foremost men of his age and country. But it is not right that the crowded 'graveyard,' which contains sculptured tablets of so many illustrious authors, artists, and men of science, should be without one to this great writer; and I appeal to the thousands by whom he is estimated to remove from England the reproach. It will gratify me much if I can obtain contributions for that purpose, in addition to my own. A large sum is by no means requisite. Such a monument as Leigh Hunt would have desired should be unassuming and unpretending as was his career in letters; and if I am so happy as to receive responses to this invitation, I will set about the work."

Some time ago, the observations printed above--which are extracted from "A Memory of Leigh Hunt" in the Art Fournal—were circulated by the writer, Mr S. C. HALL, among his personal friends and those he knew to have been the friends of the Poet. He received in payments and promises of payments about £60, and obtained from Mr JOSEPH DURHAM, A.R.A., a design for a Monument, the estimated cost of which would be about £150, Mr Durham being willing to undertake the work for the mere expense of employed labour and materials.

Various circumstances compelled Mr Hall to suspend operations, which are now renewed, and, it may be said, with assurance of speedily accomplishing the purpose in view, by placing in Kensal Green Cemetery a suitable Monument to one of the most graceful, genial, and popular of British Poets, Essayists, and Critics, whose own line best illustrates his character,—

"Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

of whom it was said by one of his many friends, Lord Lytton,— "He had that first requisite of a good critic-a good heart;