Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/69

 her temper capricious and whimsical, and her views of life so incorrect and extravagant, that in the world where it must still be her fate to live, she sees nothing but what is offensive, because it is unlike the visionary world she has formed in her own imagination. It is not from the reading of such works that we can expect to acquire that firmness of character, which is necessary for those, who hope to support, with dignity and submission, the sorrows, pains, and infirmities, to which we are all exposed. The precepts found in them are not generally those of wisdom, patience, or sobriety. They are much more apt to excite vanity, and prompt a desire to imitate some unnatural or inconsistent character. It must be acknowledged that these are not the characteristics of all novels; there are some, where feeling and fancy are made the vehicles of an excellent moral lesson, where at the same time that they warm the imagination, they mend the heart, and place the motives for great and good actions, in so strong a point of view, without extravagant, or unreasonable embellishment, as hardly to fail of leaving a good impression. But works of this description bear a small proportion to those which are tinctured with folly and vanity, whose characters, though dazzling, and placed in various attractive attitudes, are utterly unfit for imitation, and the admiration of