THE DIRECTOR.

No. 20. SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 1807.

VICE IS NEVER SO DANGEROUS, AS WHEN IT ASSUMES THE GARB OF MORALITY.

Preface to Lovers' Vows.

IN dramatic compositions, when the hopes and fears of mankind are delineated with a masterly hand, when the former are shown to be abortive even in the promised moment of enjoyment, and when the latter are unexpectedly relieved by an unforeseen and providential intervention, the mind receives a double benefit from the representation. It learns moderation and temperance, in the current of prosperity; it acquires fortitude G g

VOL. II.

and resignation, amidst the storms of adversity.

THE drama combines all the various powers of the imitative arts, and at the same time unites duties, arduous and honorable in themselves, and highly beneficial to the community. While it has the charms of poetry in language, of painting in scenery, of statuary in form and figure, and of music in melody and harmony of sounds,-it has the power of displaying the uncertainty of earthly grandeur, of marking the calamitous end of violence and injustice, and of thereby cautioning the unwary heart against the first temptations of unregulated ambition. It possesses the most effectual means of guarding against the indulgence of the malignant passions, and of directing the desires and the habits to the gratification of the benevolent feelings;-of placing falsehood and knavery in their true light, and of making folly, presumption, and vanity contemptible and ridiculous.

I HAVE already had an opportunity of noticing some traits of indecency and profaneness, which have disgraced the English stage. I now direct the attention of my readers to a more important subject; and lament that the Drama, which is capable of being applied to the noblest and most useful purposes, and which is admirably calculated to give just and correct impressions of life and manners, and thereby to increase the prevalence of moral truth, should have been in so many instances applied to the establishment of defective principles, and to the bewildering of the unpractised and unsuspecting mind, by the palliation of vice, and by the disparagement of virtue.

To give prevalence to false motives of conduct, is extremely injurious to the interests of the community. Disorderly passions, though they may impel to vicious courses, yet they are corrigible:but tainted and defective principles preclude the return to virtue. When vice is

adorned with the semblance of morality and benevolence, she becomes infinitely more dangerous-than when she retains her native and disgusting form of vulgar Sensuality. I shall therefore think it incumbent upon me to offer a few observations upon some Comedies, which have been lately imported into this country from Germany. In a former paper, I have alluded generally to their tendency and effects; but I propose at present to enter a little more into detail, on the subject.

IN the first place, I shall notice the Comedy of Lovers' Vows, a professed imitation of Kotzebue's "Child of "Love;" in preparing which for the English stage, Mrs. Inchbald has done every thing that was practicable, to divest it of many of the exceptionable passages in the original. But, preserving the general character, it was not possible wholly to exempt it from an objection, which I will repeat in her own words; that "Vice is never so dangerous, as when it "assumes the garb of morality,"

NOTHING can be more amiable than pity for the misguided sufferer, who, by ungoverned passions, or by evil example, has been seduced from virtue, and involved in misery. This delightful sentiment has the highest possible example and authority, in that compassion and mercy, to which we address all our hopes and if it is more lovely in any one earthly instance, it is when it emanates from the pure and refined sensibility of a delicate and virtuous female. But if such a female, misled by kindness and affection, approves and admires the crime, instead of lamenting and detesting it, she corrupts her own moral feeling, and that of others. When pity for a wretched criminal leads to the palliation and approval of his guilt, the bounds between virtue and vice are soon broken down, and the heart is prepared to participate in that criminality of disposition, which it already approves.

To apply this observation to the Play