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454 fratricidal paramour, and that tomb to be annually worshipped by the youths and virgins of their country. And therefore Leigh Hunt flew into a savage passion against the critic who had chastised his crime, pretended that he himself was insidiously charged with the offences which he had applauded and celebrated in others, and tried to awaken the indignation of the public against his castigator, as if he bad been the secret assassin of private character, who was but the open foe of public enormity. The attempt was hopeless,—the public voice has lifted up against Hunt,—and sentence of excommunication from the poets of England has been pronounced, enrolled, and ratified.

There can be no radical distinction allowed between the private and public character of a poet. If a poet sympathizes with and justifies wickedness in his poetry, he is a wicked man. It matters not that his private life may be free from wicked actions. Corrupt his moral principles must be,—and if his conduct has not been flagrantly immoral, the cause must be looked for in constitution, &c. but not in conscience. It is therefore of little or no importance, whether Leigh Hunt be or be not a bad private character. He maintains, that he is a most excellent private character, and that he would blush to tell the world how highly he is thought of by an host of respectable friends. Be it so,—and that his vanity does not delude him. But this is most sure, that, in such a case, the world will never be brought to believe even the truth. The world is not fond of ingenious distinctions between the theory and the practice of morals. The public are justified in refusing to hear a man plead in favour of his character, when they hold in their hands a work of his in which all respect to character is forgotten. We must reap the fruit of what we sow; and if evil and unjust reports have arisen against Leigh Hunt as a man, and unluckily for him it is so, he ought not to attribute the rise of such reports to the political animosities which his virulence has excited, but to the real and obvious cause—his voluptuous defence of crimes revolting to Nature.

The publication of the voluptuous story of Rimini was followed, it would appear, by mysterious charges against Leigh Hunt in his domestic relations. The world could not understand the nature of his poetical love of incest; and instead of at once forgetting both the poem and the poet, many people set themselves to speculate, and talk, and ask questions, and pry into secrets with which they had nothing to do, till at last there was something like an identification of Leigh Hunt himself with Paolo, the incestuous hero of Leigh Hunt's chief Cockney poem. This was wrong, and, we believe, wholly unjust; but it was by no means unnatural; and precisely what Leigh Hunt is himself in the weekly practice of doing to other people without the same excuse. Leigh Hunt has now spoken out so freely to the public on the subject, that there can be no indelicacy in talking of it, in as far as it respects him, at least; and since he has most unjustly accused us, and our brethren the Quarterly Reviewers, of seeking to destroy his reputation, it is worth while to hear him speak for himself. The exhibition he makes in a late Number of the Examiner is singular, and, on many accounts, painful.

"As a specimen of the calumnies directed against those who enrage the world by differing with them, and who will practise neither their want of charity towards others, nor their gross and exclusive indulgence towards themselves, we lay before our readers the following extraordinary accusations. We do not know whether our contempt of their falsity would have allowed us to do this had they been mentioned to us in a different style; but we think we can perceive, that the writer of the letter on the subject is really a well-wisher, and we will give an answer to a single honest and kind person, which we might deny to thousands of malignant accusers and unconscious flatterers, like the Quarterly Reviewers,—miserable gabblers behind walls,—who take care at once to accuse and to exempt,—to endeavour to injure, and to save themselves from the consequences of their falsehood. Our Correspondent, after saying that the Editor of this paper must be astonished—but he had better publish the whole letter at once.

June 11, 1818. ,—If your character really is such as the readers of the Examiner imagine it to be, (and that is the only source from whence I can form a judgment) you must certainly require a key to understand the illiberal attack that is made upon you in the last Number of the Quarterly Review; and to enable you to do so, I inform you, that report speaks of you as a perfect tyrant in