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fpecies of enormity. Charles de Moor all the time, though co- 

 vered with crimes, impiou?, facrilegious, an incendiary, a mur- 

 derer, afFefls to moralife on the inequality of human conditions; 

 reprefents this inequality, as a frff.cient plea for the outrages of the 

 robber and the pirate; fets down his crimes to the account of 

 overruling Providence; and exalts hi mfelf and his fellow robbers 

 into the facred charadlers of minifters of eternal juftice, the pre- 

 deftined fcourges of guilty men, chofen inftruments, authorifed 

 and appointed by Heaven, to redlify the defeds of fecial and civil 

 inftitulions. Charles de JS.'oor loves to diftiadi'in his own coufin, 

 who had been bred up with him from her infancy, and fhe returns 

 his paflion with equal ardour. He vifits this lady in difguife^, 

 converfes with her, makes love to her, yet, ftrange to tell, (he 

 does not difcover who he is ; and what is yet more ftrange, and 

 certainly an extraordinary and original ftroke of dramatic contri- 

 vance, though the lady does not recognize her lover, fhe perceives 

 a very ftriking refemblance between the gentleman and himfelf, 

 but flops fhort in this critical point, and adually falls in love with 

 the fuppofed ftranger for his likenefs to the deceifed lover, to 

 whom fhe becomes falfe through an excefs of love * De Moor 

 having thus fucceeded, in feducing his own miftrefs to exchange 

 the fubflance for the fhadow, and in rivalling himfelf, very ab- 

 furdly and unreafonably, in my opinion, flies from her in a rage, 

 at the mofl tender moment imaginable; and becomes weary of 



life, 



» This is a (dramatic fituation worthy of Bayes himfelf, there is nothing like it in 

 the amours of Prince Prcttyman. 



