He labours under the
burden of a sin more deadly than either of these. The two great elements
of all dignified poetry, religious feeling, and patriotic feeling, have
no place in his mind. His religion is a poor tame dilution of the
blasphemies of the _Encyclopaedie_--his patriotism a crude, vague,
ineffectual, and sour Jacobinism. He is without reverence either for God
or man; neither altar nor throne have any dignity in his eyes. He speaks
well of nobody but two or three great dead poets, and in so speaking of
them he does well; but, alas! Mr. Hunt is no conjurer [Greek: technae ou
lanthanei]. He pretends, indeed, to be an admirer of Spencer and
Chaucer, but what he praises in them is never what is most deserving of
praise--it is only that which he humbly conceives, bears some
resemblance to the more perfect productions of Mr. Leigh Hunt; and we
can always discover, in the midst of his most violent ravings about the
Court of Elizabeth, and the days of Sir Philip Sidney, and the Fairy
Queen--that the real objects of his admiration are the Coterie of
Hampstead and the Editor of the Examiner. When he talks about chivalry
and King Arthur, he is always thinking of himself, and "_a small party
of friends, who meet once a-week at a Round Table, to discuss the merits
of a leg of mutton, and of the subjects upon which we are to write._"--
Mr. Leigh Hunt's ideas concerning the sublime, and concerning his own
powers, bear a considerable resemblance to those of his friend Bottom,
the weaver, on the same subjects; "I will roar, that it shall do any
man's heart good to hear me."--"I will roar you an 'twere any
nightingale."

The poetry of Mr. Hunt is such as might be expected from the personal
character and habits of its author. As a vulgar man is perpetually
labouring to be genteel--in like manner, the poetry of this man is
always on the stretch to be grand. He has been allowed to look for a
moment from the anti-chamber into the saloon, and mistaken the waving of
feathers and the painted floor for the _sine qua non's_ of elegant
society. He would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and is sorry
that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning with yellow
breeches and flesh-coloured silk stockings. He sticks an artificial
rose-bud into his button hole in the midst of winter. He wears no
neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the Prints of Petrarch. In
his verses also he is always desirous of being airy, graceful, eas