Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A FRIENDLY MEDIATOR. 137
that nothing will satisfy the victim or induce him
to refrain from a prosecution but a disclosure of the
writer's name, calls upon the Hunts to see what he
can do. This gentleman does not think that in any
case there need be much feared in the way of damages.
But he does not any more than the others justify the
attack. Mr Richardson's discussion of the question
is curious. He says that Mr Leigh Hunt can, he
believes, without difficulty, "prove himself individually
to be almost, if not altogether, as pure and
correct a man as walks the streets of London," but
that no doubt the power of a jury to discriminate
between abuse of a school and tendency in poetry,
and abuse of a man, is doubtful. " It seems to me,"
he says, " that the publication of anything mischievous
by a man of good character is infinitely more dangerous
than a similar publication by a man of bad
character. . . . Thus, if the poem is impure, would
a pure man choose an impure subject? Would
his individual purity justify his sending impurit}"
abroad ? " These reasonings would be much out of
place in our day, when this is exactly what happens,
and not only men but women, themselves of perfectly
good character and no naughty impulses, write all
manner of immodest stories and suggestions, on prin-
ciple. And it is truly astounding to discover that all
this question of purity and impurity and Mr Leigh
Hunt's morals, and his critic's abuse which shocked
the world, was about that rhymed novel or novel-
ette the ' Story of Rimini,' which very few people in
our day have ever read, and which is merely a weak
and lengthy paraphrase of the immortal dozen lines of
Dante in which Francesca and Paolo were first re-