To sympathy with hopes and fears it heedeth not!’
Sometimes he might be seen pensively sauntering in Millfield Lane,[189] between Caen Wood and Highgate, an ideal lane in those days, secluded between great wayside elms and other trees, ‘Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,’ curving in its course, and farther sheltered by high hedges, not looking as if begrudged the ground they occupied, but buttressed by wide, grassy banks, bright with wild-flowers, fragrant with rose and woodbine in their season, and clustered generously with primroses in spring.
Highgate Ponds and Sheep.
Hither came Collins, and Leslie, and Constable, as Gainsborough had done before them, for their foregrounds of soft mosses, that underline the sward in late autumn as down does the breasts of birds; and the big bronze dock-leaves, and vari-coloured toadstools, and the painted cups of scarlet peziza[190] that bloom, as it were, on bits of sere wood and dead branches. A lane so lovely that it charmed the ordinary wayfarer, and inspired poets and artists; so that when, some years ago, a correspondent of the Athenæum drew attention to the fact that official vandalism was destroying its natural loveliness, cutting down some of the fine old trees, and lopping others of the umbrageous branches that had shaded the heads of Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, ‘Elia,’ and Leigh Hunt, as well as those of many of our best known and loved artists, a feeling of general indignation was aroused, and much local influence exerted to stop the farther destruction of a spot so full of interest and association, but with what effect I am ignorant.
Coleridge.
To this picturesque old lane, and other lovely bits of Hampstead and its neighbourhood, the triad of poets whose centre was Leigh Hunt’s cottage are indebted for many a rustic image, many an exquisite description of pastoral and woodland scenery. The picturesque old trees, the aerial suggestions, the near cornfields and country lanes, the rippling or moss-muffled rills that then channelled the grassy slopes, and trickled down to the Fleet ditch at Kentish Town, were mentally preserved, to reappear in verse that gives them immortality.
From a boy, Leigh Hunt, whose father at one time lived in Hampstead Square, had been familiar with the beautiful suburb, and for some months before the publication of ‘Rimini’ had been daily wandering about the precincts of Caen Wood, and the grassy land