uble
the stream; still less those who poison it.

_Montesinos_.--

"_Vesanum tetigisse timent_, _fugiuntque poetam_
_Qui sapiunt_; _agitant pueri_, _incautique sequuntur_."

_Sir Thomas More_.--This brings us again to the point at which you
bolted. The desire of producing present effect, the craving for
immediate reputation, have led to another vice, analogous to and
connected with that of the vicious style, which the same causes are
producing, but of worse consequences. The corruption extends from the
manner to the matter; and they who brew for the press, like some of those
who brew for the publicans, care not, if the potion has but its desired
strength, how deleterious may be the ingredients which they use. Horrors
at which the innocent heart quails, and the healthy stomachs heaves in
loathing, are among the least hurtful of their stimulants.

_Montesinos_.--This too, Sir Thomas, is no new evil. An appetite for
horrors is one of the diseased cravings of the human mind; and in old
times the tragedies which most abounded in them, were for that reason the
most popular. The dramatists of our best age, great Ben and greater
Shakespeare excepted, were guilty of a farther sin, with which the
writers whom you censure are also to be reproached; they excited their
auditors by the representation of monstrous crimes--crimes out of the
course of nature. Such fables might lawfully be brought upon the Grecian
stage, because the belief of the people divested them of their odious and
dangerous character; there they were well known stories, regarded with a
religious persuasion of their truth; and the personages, being
represented as under the overruling influence of dreadful destiny, were
regarded therefore with solemn commiseration, not as voluntary and guilty
agents. There is nothing of this to palliate or excuse the production of
such stories in later times; the choice, and, in a still greater degree,
the invention of any such, implies in the author, not merely a want of
judgment, but a defect in moral feeling. Here, however, the dramatists
of that age stopped. They desired to excite in their audience the
pleasure of horror, and this was an abuse of the poet's art: but they
never aimed at disturbing their moral perceptions, at presenting
wickedness in an attractive form, exciting sympathy with guilt, and
admiration for villainy, thereby confounding the distinctions between
right and wrong. This has been done in o