plexion, the amusement which the works above-mentioned afford, should, I think, be sparingly allowed, and judiciously chosen. In such bosoms, feeling or susceptibility must be often repressed or directed; to encourage it by premature or unnatural means, is certainly hurtful. They resemble some luxuriant soils, which may be enriched beyond a wholesome fertility, till weeds are their only produce; weeds, the more to be regretted, as, in the language of a novelist himself, "they grow in the soil from which virtue should have sprung,"

No 29. SATURDAY, August 20, 1785.

THE

HE advantages and use of Biography have of late been so often mentioned, and are now so universally allowed, that it is needless for any modern author to set them forth. That department of writing, however, has been of late years so much cultivated, that it has fared with biography as with every other art; it has lost much of its dignity in its commonness, and many lives have been presented to the public, from which little instruction or amusement could be drawn. Indivi

duals have been traced in minute and ordinary actions, from which no consequences could arise, but to the private circle of their own families and friends, and in the detail of which we saw no pas

of Tancred and Sigismunda, which, from the very beginning of the play, is the object in which the reader or spectator is interested. Reverse the situation, make it a contrivance to defeat the claim of the tyrant's daughter, to give the throne to Tancred, and to place Sigismunda there at his side, the audience would admire its ingenuity, and rejoice in its success.

In the mixture of a plot, and amidst the variety of situations, where weaknesses are flattered and passions indulged, at the same time that virtues are displayed and duties performed, one set of readers will enjoy the pleasure of the first, while those only who have less need to be instructed will seize the instruction of the latter. When Marcus dies for his country, the ladies in the side-boxes only consider his death as removing the bar to the marriage of Lucia with his brother Portius.

In tragedy, as in novel, which is sometimes a kind of tragedy, the author is

obliged, in justification of weak characters, to elevate villainous ones, or to throw round their vices a bewitching address and captivating manners. Lovelace is made

a character which the greater number of girls admire, in order to justify the seduction of Clarissa. Lothario, though very inferior, is something of the same cast, to mitigate the crime of Calista. The story would not be probable else;— granted; but in proportion to the art of the poet in rendering it probable, he heightens the immoral effect of which I complain.

As the incidents must be formed, so must the sentiments be introduced according to the character and condition of the person speaking them, not according to the laws of virtue, or the dictates of prudence. To give them this propriety, they must often be apologies for vice and for fraud, or contain ridicule against virtue and honesty. It is not sufficient to

answer, that if the person uttering them is punished in the course, or at the end of the play, the expiation is sufficiently made; if the sentiments at the time are shrewdly imagined, and forcibly expressed, they will have a powerful effect on the mind, and leave impressions which the retribution of poetical justice will hardly be able to efface.

On poetical justice, indeed, I do not lay so much stress as some authors have done. I incline to be of the opinion of one of my predecessors, that we are frequently more roused to a love of virtue, and a hatred of vice, when virtue is unfortunate, and vice successful, than when each receives the recompence it merits. But I impute more to striking incidents, to the sentiments running through the tenor of a piece, than to the general impression of its denouemen Mons. D'Alembert says, that in any sort of spectacle which fronte, leine the poet more at liberty than