he 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 had 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