added to the crimes or the calamities of mankind? Into what
immoralities did it plunge Gray, or Goldsmith? Has it tainted the purity
of Beattie in his Minstrel, or that of the living minstrel of the LAY?
What reader has Mason corrupted, or what reader has Cowper not
benefitted? Milton was an enthusiast both in religion and politics. Many
enthusiasts with whom he was connected, doubtless condemned the exercise
of his imagination in his immortal poem as a crime; but his genius was
too mighty to be restrained by opposition, and his imagination too vast
and powerful to be kept down by a party. Had he confined himself to his
prose writings, weighty and elaborate as some of them are, how little
service would he have done the world, and how little would he now be
read or quoted! In his life-time politics might blind his enemies, and
fanaticism his friends. But now, who, comparatively, reads the
Iconoclastes? who does not read Comus?"

"What then," said Mr. Tyrrel, "you would have our young men spend their
time in reading idle verses, and our girls, I suppose, in reading loose
romances?"

"It is to preserve both from evils which I deprecate," said Mr. Stanley,
"that I would consign the most engaging subjects to the best hands, and
raise the taste of our youth, by allowing a little of their leisure, and
of their leisure only, to such amusements; and that chiefly with a view
to disengage them from worse pursuits. It is not romance, but indolence;
it is not poetry, but sensuality, which are the prevailing evils of the
day--evils far more fatal in themselves, far more durable in their
effects, than the perusal of works of wit and genius. Imagination will
cool of itself. The effervescence of fancy will soon subside; but
absorbing dissipation, but paralyzing idleness, but degrading self-love,

"Grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength."

"A judicious reformer," said Sir John, "will accommodate his remedy to
an existing and not an imaginary evil. When the old romances, the grand
Cyruses, the Clelias, the Calprenedes, and the Cassandras, had turned
all the young heads in Europe; or when the fury of knight-errantry
demanded the powerful rein of Cervantes to check it--it was a duty to
attempt to lower the public delirium. When, in our own age and country,
Sterne wrote his corrupt, but too popular lesser work, he became the
mischievous founder of the school of sentiment. A hundred writers
communicated, a hundred