Page:The robbers - a tragedy (IA robberstragedy00schiiala).pdf/20

This page has been validated.
xvi
PREFACE.

bonds of this association becoming at length indissoluble, till, wading on gradually through scenes of increasing atrocity, he feels, in the shipwreck of all his happiness in this world, a dreadful anticipation of that inevitable doom of misery which he knows is to attend him in the next?—What is there, it must be asked, in an example of this kind, which is unfavourable to the cause of morality? Is it the grandeur of the character of Moor? But this very grandeur is the circumstance which makes the example more forcibly persuasive to virtue. The grandeur of his character consists in those excellent endowments of nature which guilt has poisoned and perverted to the bane of society, to a determined hostility against his own species, and to the most poignant misery of their once amiable possessor.—Is this a grandeur of character which incites to imitation, or which can corrupt by its example? Far otherwise. With equal justice might we arraign the poem of Milton

of

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.