n a morning; indeed, if such
descriptions had the same effect on the minds of youth, that
raw-head and bloody-bones have upon children, to frighten
them from the objects they ought to shun they might be of
some service, but when upon trial they find them better than
they have been taught to believe them, they are apt to
imagine them not so bad as they really are.

Let us now return to _the dear flighty creature_, and the
sentence which she passes upon the Poets. She has a fling at
Homer, whom the beauteous Harriet, in her dispute with the
university pedant, had before criticized upon in a masterly
manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of
her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled
him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy
which I shall not enter into, with so lovely a disputant,
whose eyes, whatever her lips may be, are always in the
right. We are asked, _would Alexander, madman as he was,
have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer, of
what violences, murders, depredations, have not the Epic
poets been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false
glory, and false Religion?_ These remarks are, I suppose,
occasioned by the great veneration which the Macedonian hero
professed for Homer's writings, and by his famous imitation,
or rather improvement, on the cruelty of Achilles, in
dragging round the walls of a conquered city its brave
defender. But may it not be asked with equal, if not greater
propriety, would many profligate and abandoned, as they
naturally are, be so very profligate and abandoned, were it
not for Richardson? And, of what rapes, violences, and
debaucheries, have not the Romance writers been the
occasion, by propagating false love, false chastity, and
false, I shall not add religion, 'till you, who are so well
qualified, have demonstrated which is the true one? If
Alexander exceeded Achilles in cruelty, may not many go
beyond Lovelace in that, as well as in debauchery? None but
such as Alexander have ever proposed to imitate Achilles,
but every man of a moderate fortune may set up Lovelace for
a pattern, by whom to model his conduct. Should it be said,
that in Lovelace, Richardson gives the example of a man, who
brought ruin and destruction on himself by his vices, and
that he constantly expresses the utmost abhorrence of his
bad morals, with equal, nay, with greater justice, must not
the same be said of Homer? Nay, as it happens, he