Page:Dramas 2.pdf/10

x

their own family; and even if they went alone, the probability of their meeting some of their respectable acquaintance was a salutary check upon the dangerous spirit of adventure. But now this is no longer the case: the simple stripling goes by himself, or with some companion equally thoughtless and imprudent; and the confidence he feels there of not being under the observation of any whom he is likely to meet elsewhere, gives him a freedom to follow every bent of his present inclination, however dangerous.

Nay, there are some excellent persons who carry the matter so far as to wage general war against pleasures derived from imagination. To bring before the mind representations of strong passions, they say, is dangerous and unfavourable to virtue. Most assuredly, if they are brought before the mind as examples, or as things slightly to be blamed, as evils unavoidably incident to human nature, they are dangerous; but if they are exhibited as warnings, and as that which produces, when indulged, great human misery and debasement, they teach us a lesson more powerful than many that proceed from the academical chair or the pulpit. Consistently with this maxim, historians, too, should refrain from animated and descriptive