re is an antidote to the poison they contain,
in the open and undisguised profligacy with which it is presented. If
they are wicked, they have the honesty at least to profess wickedness.
The mark of the beast is set visibly on their foreheads; and though they
have the boldness to recommend vice, they want the effrontery to make
her pass for virtue. In their grossest immoralities, too, they scarcely
ever seem to be perfectly in earnest; and appear neither to wish nor to
hope to make proselytes. They indulge their own vein of gross riot and
debauchery; but they do not seek to corrupt the principles of their
readers; and are contented to be reprobated as profligate, if they are
admired at the same time for wit and originality.

The immorality of Mr. Moore is infinitely more insidious and malignant.
It seems to be his aim to impose corruption upon his readers, by
concealing it under the mask of refinement; to reconcile them
imperceptibly to the most vile and vulgar sensuality, by blending its
language with that of exalted feeling and tender emotion; and to steal
impurity into their hearts, by gently perverting the most simple and
generous of their affections. In the execution of this unworthy task, he
labours with a perseverance at once ludicrous and detestable. He may be
seen in every page running round the paltry circle of his seductions
with incredible zeal and anxiety, and stimulating his jaded fancy for
new images of impurity, with as much melancholy industry as ever outcast
of the muses hunted for epithets or metre.

It is needless, we hope, to go deep into the inquiry, why certain
compositions have been reprobated as licentious, and their authors
ranked among the worst enemies of morality. The criterion by which their
delinquency may be determined, is fortunately very obvious: no scene can
be tolerated in description, which could not be contemplated in reality,
without a gross violation of propriety: no expression can be pardoned in
poetry to which delicacy could not listen in the prose of real life.

No writer can transgress those limits, and be held guiltless; but there
are degrees of guiltiness, and circumstances of aggravation or apology,
which ought not to be disregarded. A poet of a luxuriant imagination may
give too warm a colouring to the representation of innocent endearments,
or be betrayed into indelicacies in delineating the allurements of some
fair seducer, while it is obviously his general intention to