ABSTRACT
Hunt, Story of Rimini (1816); review by John Wilson Croker and William Gifford, Quarterly Review, XIV (Jan. 1816), 473–481. [Issue appeared May 1816.] The reviewers establish the tone by pretending not to know who Hunt is — though he was a national celebrity whose poem was published by John Murray. They then proceed to pick out the most ludicrous lines they can find from a poem that, read as a whole, is charming if not great. The notorious couplet quoted on page 479 (“The two divinest things this world has got, / A lovely woman in a rural spot”) evoked from Coventry Patmore this urban Victorian parody: “The two divinest things this world can grab, / A handsome woman in a hansom cab.”
