ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEAtRE. i8r 



gree eloquent, impaflioned and fublime. With a particular 

 detail of this tragedy, I fhall clofe the account (I am afraid a 

 very imperfed, though without the apology of being a ihort 

 one) which I have taken the liberty to lay before this Society, 

 of the 'Theatre Allemand. 



A YOUNG man, of high birth and expedations, Charles, 

 cldeft fon of the Comte de Moor^ endowed by nature with a foul 

 of fire and a heart full of fenfibility, is led away, in the prime 

 of youth, by the love of pleafure and diflipation too common 

 at that age. After running a courfe of thoughtlefs and crimi- 

 nal extravagance, he liftens to the voice of virtue, which had 

 been ftifled, not loft, in his heart, and writes to his father, 

 whom amidft all his vice and folly he had never ceafed to love, 

 a letter full of penitence and contrition, defiring to return to 

 his duty, and to be received again to pardon and to favour. 

 This is intercepted by the villany of a younger brother, who 

 manages fo as to perfuade his father that his fon Charles (who 

 appears to have been his great favourite) is totally abandoned 

 to villany and vice ; in confequence of which, the old man- 

 throws him utterly fVom his regard, and fends him a letter re- 

 nouncing him for ever, and containing that paternal maledic- 

 tion, fo dreadful to the fenfibility of a fon who loved his pa- 

 rent. Oa receipt of this, Charles becomes defperate ; and, 

 amidft the ftorm of his feelings, outraged by what he thinks 

 the inhumanity of his father, readily accepts of a propofal 

 made by fbme of his diffipated companions, to leave a world 

 in which they had nothing but contempt and poverty to exped,^ 

 to fly to the fbrefts of Bohemia, and there to eftabUfli them- 

 felves into a fociety of robbers and banditti, of which he was 

 to be the chief. In the horrid duties of this new employment, 

 he Ihews all that wonderful magnanimity, that perfuafive elo- 

 quence, that undaunted valour, which would have graced a 

 better ftation ; yet amidft the elevation and activity of mind 

 with which the exercife and the fuccefs of thefe qualities 



are 



