Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
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.
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