 be amused," said Sir John, "it is surely of importance that they should be safely amused. We should not therefore wish to obliterate in authors such faculties as wit and fancy, nor to extinguish a taste for them in readers."

"Show me any one instance of good that ever was effected by any one poet," said Mr. Tyrrel, "and I will give up the point; while, on the other hand, a thousand instances of mischief might be produced."

"The latter part of your assertion, sir," said I, "I fear is too true: but to what evil has elevation of fancy led Milton, or Milton his readers? Into what immoralities did it involve Spenser or Cowley? Has Thomson 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
