and depressed the standard of our
national morality. And knowledge of this sort is to be very sparingly
gleaned from parliamentary debates, from state papers, and from the
works of grave historians. It must either not be acquired at all, or it
must be acquired by the perusal of the light literature which has at
various periods been fashionable. We are therefore by no means disposed
to condemn this publication, though we certainly cannot recommend the
handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for young
ladies.

We have said that we think the present publication perfectly
justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who
seems to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge of
immorality so often brought against the literature of the Restoration.
We do not blame him for not bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless
rigor of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious and
impudent offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at least the
gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a
little too much in the easy style of Lucio; and perhaps his exceeding
lenity disposes us to be somewhat too severe.

And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our
literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It
is clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most
emphatic sense of the words, "earthly, sensual, devilish." Its
indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned not less by the rules
of good taste than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion, so
disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here
Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, "graceful and humane,"
but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We find
ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate,
impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any
place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads
of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of
hell.

Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his
contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English
dramatists; and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the
plea. We altogether differ from this opinion. The crime charged is not
mere coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate in one age
become gross in