_Blackwood's_ reviewed _Adonais_ and _The Cenci_ in December, 1821. The Della Cruscans were reported to have come again from "retreats of Cockney dalliance in the London suburbs" and "by wainloads from Pisa." The Cockneys were said to hate everything that was good and true and honorable, all moral ties and Christian principles, and to be steeped in desperate licentiousness. _Adonais_ is fifty-five stanzas of "unintelligible stuff" made up of every possible epithet that the poet has been able to "conglomerate in his piracy through the Lexicon." The sense has been wholly subordinated to the rhymes. The author is a "glutton of names and colours" and has accomplished no more than might be done on such subjects as Mother Goose, Waterloo or Tom Thumb. Two cruel and loathsome parodies follow: _Wouther the city marshal broke his leg_ and an _Elegy on My Tom Cat_, which, it is claimed, are less nonsensical, verbose and inflated than _Adonais_. _The Cenci_ is "a vulgar vocabulary of rottenness and reptilism" in an "odiferous, colorific and daisy-enamoured style." It is regretted by the writer that it is impossible to believe that Shelley's reason is unsettled, for this would be the best apology for the poem.[517]
When _The Liberal_ was organized Shelley was spoken of thus:
"But Percy Bysshe Shelly has now published a long series of poems, the only object of which seems to be the promotion of _atheism_ and _incest_; and we can no longer hesitate to avow our belief, that he is as worthy of co-operating with the King of Cockaigne, as he is unworthy of co-operating with Lord Byron. Shelley is a man of genius, but he has no sort of sense or judgment. He is merely 'an inspired idiot.' Leigh Hunt is a man of talents, but vanity and vulgarity neutralize all his efforts to pollute the public mind. Lord Byron we regard not only as a man of lofty genius, but of great shrewdness and knowledge of the world. What can HE seriously hope from associating his name with such people as these?"[518]
As in the case of Keats, _Blackwood's_ did not have the decency to desist from its indecent articles after Shelley's death. September, 1824, this vulgar ridicule of the two dead poets appeared in answer to Bryan Waller Procter's review of Shelley's poems in the preceding number of the _Edinburgh Review_: