A severely critical estimate, however, will discover in Leigh Hunt— perhaps in very close juxtaposition and in a sort of causal relation to these merits themselves—something which is not quite so good. Even his catholicity may be set down in part, by the Enemy, to a certain loose facility of liking, an absence of fastidiousness and selection. If Lamb goes too far towards the ends of the English literary earth for the objects of his affection, Hunt is rather too content to find them _in triviis et angiportis_. He does not exactly “like grossly,” but he likes a little promiscuously. The fault is no very bad one; and it becomes exceedingly venial—nay, a positive virtue in time and circumstance—when we compare it with the unreasonable exclusiveness of the Neo-classic period. But it is a kind of criticism which inclines rather too much to the uncritical. [Sidenote: _His attitude to Dante._] A further objection may be taken by applying that most dangerous of all tests, the question “What does he _dis_like?” For the twentieth time (probably) let us repeat that in criticism likes and dislikes are free; and that the man who, however unfortunately, still honestly dislikes what the consensus of good criticism approves, is entitled to say so, and had much better say so. But he gives his reasons, descends upon particulars, at his peril. Leigh Hunt, to do him justice, is not like Mr Rymer—it is not his habit “no wise to allow.” But it is certainly a pity that one of his exceptions should be Dante, and it is certainly a much greater pity that among the reasons given for unfavourable criticism[472] should be because Dante “puts fabulous people with real among the damned,” because Purgatory is such a very disagreeable idea, and because the whole poem contains “absurdities too obvious nowadays to need remark.”