publications a summary of the _Faery Queen_, converting the prosaic
portions into prose, and giving only the true poetry in the rich and
musical verses of Spenser. A travelling companion like this, we
venture to assure our clerical friend, would not be pocketed so
wearily as the original work. The harmony of the divine poet would
saturate his heart and beam from his eyes; and when wandering where we
met him, among the storied ruins of the Rhine, he would have by his
side not the man Spenser, surrounded by the prejudices and rudenesses
of his age, but the spirit Spenser, discoursing to and with the
universal heart of nature. Leigh Hunt, with more originality--more of
the quality men call genius, but a less correct perception of what is
really wanted--has done the same thing for the great Italian poets;
and in his sparkling pages Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and the rest of the
tuneful train, appear unfettered by the more unpleasing peculiarities
of their mortal time. But the criticism by which their steps are
attended, though full of grace and acuteness, is absolute, not
relative. They are judged by a standard of taste and feeling existing
in the author's mind: the _Inferno_ is a magnificent caldron of
everything base and detestable in human nature; and the _Orlando_, a
paradise of love, beauty, and delight. Dante, the sublime poet, but
inexorable bigot, meets with little tolerance from Leigh Hunt; while
Ariosto, exhaustless in his wealth, ardent and exulting--full of the
same excess of life which in youth sends the blood dancing and boiling
through the veins--has his warmest sympathy. This kind of criticism is
but a new form of the error we have pointed out; for both poets
receive his homage--the one praised in the spontaneous outpourings of
his heart, the other served with the rites of devil-worship.

When we talk of the great authors of one generation pressing forward
to claim the sympathy of the _maturer_ genius of the next, we mean
precisely what we say. We are well aware that some of the great
writers we have casually mentioned have no equals in the present
world; yet the present world is more mature in point of taste than
their own. That is the reason why they _are_ great authors now. Some
books last for a season, some for a generation, some for an age, or
two, or more; always dropping off when the time they reach outstrips
them. One of these lost treasures is sometimes reprinted; but if this
is done in the hope of a