[ 45 ] 



held up to view, as a full excufe for the broadeft deviations from 

 reditude, the groflefl enormities of condud. The heroes are 

 robbers, cut-throats, fuicides, poifoners and parricides. The he- 

 roines are devoid of chaitity, the flaves of paffion, fearlefs of fhame, 

 unawed by God, they talk blafphemy and call it fentiment. The 

 blafphemous exclamations againft Providence, in the Leonora of 

 Burger, the ferocious and criminal rhapfodies of Charles De Moor 

 and his affociates, in the Robbers, and particularly the Minijler 

 throughout, may ferve to eftablifh and illuftrate my afTertions. In 

 fad, the writers of the German School feem to imagine, that, as 

 the imitative arts have the phyfical power of reprefenting objefls 

 good and bad, pleafing and hideous, fo, their profeffors have the 

 dangerous privilege of exhibiting to public view every objcd, that 

 lies within the compafs of phyfically poffible reprefentaiion, with- 

 out regard to the principles of found morality, or the rules of cor- 

 redtafte, which forbid the reprefentation of fome things, as licen- 

 linns, and criminal ; of others, as too horrid and difgurting. 



It is well obfcrved, in the Monthy* Review, thnt the clafs of 

 "fiories, fuch as are the favourites with the German writers, " by 

 " familiarizingcharaders of a ftronger finew than arc common, 

 " crimes of a bolder enormity, and modes of coercion, v^-liich the 

 " tolerance of a polifhed age had renounced, tend to fuggeft a re- 

 " vival of the hemic in virtue and vice ; and to prepare the mind, 

 *' for contemplating with complacency a fort of characlcrs, the in- 

 fluence 



* See the Ardde i7c;OT«?r of I/»;;rt. Vol. 15, New S.rie,-, p-'je 21., 



