‘The bodies of the two lovers are sent back, by order of the husband, to Ravenna, to be buried in one tomb. We shall close our extracts with the account of the arrival of this mournful procession, so different in every respect from the former one.
[“The days were then at close of autumn—still,” to
“Young hearts betrothed used to go there to pray.”]
‘We have given these extracts at length, that our readers might judge of the story of Rimini, less on our authority, than its own merits; and we have few remarks to add to those which we ventured to make at the beginning. The diction of this little poem is among its chief beauties—and yet its greatest blemishes are faults in diction.—It is very English throughout—but often very affectedly negligent, and so extremely familiar as to be absolutely low and vulgar. What, for example, can be said for such lines as
“She had stout notions on the marrying score,” or
“He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours;—” or
“And better still—in my idea at least,” or
“The two divinest things this world has got.”
‘We see no sort of beauty either in such absurd and unusual phrases as “a clipsome waist,”—“a scattery light,” or “flings of sunshine,”—nor any charm in such comparatives as “martialler,” or “tastefuller,” or “franklier,” or in such words as “whisks,” and “swaling,” and “freaks and snatches,” and an hundred others in the same taste. We think the author rather heretical too on the subject of versification—though we have much less objection to his theory than to his practice. But we cannot spare him a line more on the present occasion—and must put off the rest of our admonitions till we meet him again.’