"to the holy contemplation of your own divine perfections, and there 'perk up with timid mouth' 'and lamping eyes' (as you have it) upon what to you is dearer and more glorious than all created things besides, till you become absorbed in your own identity--motionless, mighty, and magnificent, in the pure calm of Cockneyism ... instead of rousing yourself from your lair, like some noble beast when attacked by the hunter, you roll yourself round like a sick hedgehog, that has crawled out into the 'crisp' gravel walk round your box at Hampstead, and oppose only the feeble pricks of your hunch'd-up back to the kicks of any one who wishes less to hurt you, than to drive you into your den." The _Quarterly_ of the same month contained the notorious review of _Foliage_. Southey, in a counterfeited Cockney style, contorts Hunt's devotion to his leafy luxuries, his flowerets, wine, music and other social joys into Epicureanism[492] and like unsound principles. He even goes so far as to accuse him of incest and adultery in his private life. There are disguised but unmistakable references to Keats and to Shelley; the latter is credited with evil doings that fall little short of machinations with the devil. The volume of poems, which was the ostensible pretext for this parade of foul slander, not a word of which was true, has, Southey says, richness of language and picturesqueness of imagery.[493] The July number of _Blackwood's_ went a step beyond Southey and identified the characters of the _Story of Rimini_ with Hunt and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent. After ostentatiously giving currency to the scandal, "Z" then proceeds to deny the rumor--which had no existence save in the minds of Hunt's vilifiers--in order to preserve immunity from libel. At the time that Lamb replied to Southey in 1823 he took up these charges made against Hunt in 1818. He said: "I was admitted to his household for several years, and do most solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his domestic relations as correct as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a poem.... In spite of 'Rimini,' I must look upon its author as a man of taste and a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordial-minded men that I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside companion. I do not mean to affront or wound your feelings when I say that in his more genial moods, he has often reminded me of you."[494]