by objecting to the monotony of Pope’s versification, and all the critics of the new or German school by laughing at Wordsworth.”  In the preface to his collected poems [1832] occurs the following interesting testimony to the recentness of the new criticism.  “So long does fashion succeed in palming its petty instincts upon the world for those of a nation and of nature, that it is only of late years that the French have ceased to think some of the most affecting passages in Shakespeare ridiculous. . . .  Yet the English themselves, no great while since, half blushed at these criticisms, and were content if the epithet ‘bizarre’ (’votre bizarre Shakespeare’) was allowed to be translated into ‘a wild, irregular genius.’  Everything was wild and irregular except rhymesters in toupees.  A petty conspiracy of decorums took the place of what was becoming to humanity.”  In the summer of 1822 Hunt went by sailing vessel through the Mediterranean to Italy.  The books which he read chiefly on board ship were “Don Quixote,” Ariosto, and Berni; and his diary records the emotion with which he coasted the western shores of Spain, the ground of Italian romance, where the Paynim chivalry used to land to go against Charlemagne:  the scene of Boiardo’s “Orlando Inamorato” and Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso.”  “I confess I looked at these shores with a human interest, and could not help feeling that the keel of our vessel was crossing a real line, over which knights and lovers had passed.  And so they have, both real and fabulous; the former not less romantic, the latter scarcely less real. . . .  Fair speed your sails over the lucid waters, ye lovers, on a lover-like sea!  Fair speed them, yet never land; for where the poet has left you, there ought ye, as ye are, to be living forever—­forever gliding about a summer sea, touching at its flowery islands and reposing beneath its moon.”

Hunt’s sojourn in Italy, where he lived in close association with Byron and Shelley, enabled him to preciser his knowledge of the Italian language and literature.  In 1846 he published a volume of “Stories from the Italian Poets,” containing a summary or free paraphrase in prose of the “Divine Comedy” and the poems of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, “with comments throughout, occasional passages versified and critical notices of the lives and genius of the authors.”  Like our own romanticist poet Longfellow, who rediscovered Europe for America, Leigh Hunt was a sympathetic and interpretative rather than a creative genius; and like Longfellow, an admirable translator.  Among his collected poems are a number of elegant and spirited versions from various mediaeval literatures.  “The Gentle Armour” is a playful adaptation of a French fabliau “Les Trois Chevaliers et la Chemise,” which tells of a knight whose hard-hearted lady set him the task of fighting his two rivals in the lists, armed only in her smock; and, in contrition for this harsh imposure, went to the altar with her faithful champion, wearing only the same bloody sark as her bridal garment.  At least this is the pretty turn which Hunt gave to the story.  In the original it had a coarser ending.  There are also, among these translations from mediaeval sources, the Latin drinking song attributed to Walter Map—­