Giannetta, silent ever,
Feasted till the sunlight fell;”
—thereby implying that the owner of the falcon was a brute, and his mistress a deliberate gourmande, gloating over the trail! The story, even as told by the Florentine, has always seemed to us hideously unnatural. The man who could sacrifice, in cold blood, a dumb creature that loved him, would not hesitate, under temptation, to lay a sacrilegious hand on the weazand of his father; and we pray Mr Edwin Arnold to consider what kind of sympathy we should feel for Ulysses, if his first act, on his return to Ithaca, had been to drive his falchion into the heart of old Argus, who, for so many years, had been lying neglected at the gate, pining for his master’s return. Let us rather give a specimen or so of the better style of our youthful poet. We begin with the first poem.
“Oh! was there ever tale of human love
Which was not also tale of human tears?
Died not sweet Desdemona? Sorrowed not
Fair, patient Imogene? and she whose name
Lives among lovers, Sappho silver-voiced,
Was not the wailing of her passionate lyre
Ended for ever in the dull, deaf sea?