en, the morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad
tendency. Their wit is employed to _ridicule virtue_, as you will almost
always find, if you examine the matter to the bottom. The world owes a
very large part of its sufferings to tyrants; but what tyrant was there
amongst the ancients, whom the poets did not place _amongst the gods_?
Can you open an English poet, without, in some part or other of his
works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and noble persons? How
are young people not to think that the praises bestowed on these persons
are just? DRYDEN, PARNELL, GAY, THOMSON, in short, what poet have we
had, or have we, POPE only excepted, who was not, or is not, a
pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched dependent of some
part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the powers of writers in
producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in
the cases of Dr. JOHNSON and BURKE. The former, at a time when it was a
question whether war should be made on America to compel her to submit
to be taxed by the English parliament, wrote a pamphlet, entitled,
'_Taxation no Tyranny_,' to urge the nation into that war. The latter,
when it was a question, whether England should wage war against the
people of France, to prevent them from reforming their government, wrote
a pamphlet to urge the nation into _that_ war. The first war lost us
America, the last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded
us with forty millions a year of taxes. JOHNSON, however, got a _pension
for his life_, and BURKE a pension for his life, and for _three lives
after his own_! CUMBERLAND and MURPHY, the play-writers, were
pensioners; and, in short, of the whole mass, where has there been one,
whom the people were not compelled to pay for labours, having for their
principal object the deceiving and enslaving of that same people? It is,
therefore, the duty of every father, when he puts a book into the hands
of his son or daughter, to give the reader a true account of _who_ and
_what_ the writer of the book was, or is.

314. If a boy be intended for any particular calling, he ought, of
course, to be induced to read books relating to that calling, if such
books there be; and, therefore, I shall not be more particular on that
head. But, there are certain things, that all men in the middle rank of
life, ought to know something of; because the knowledge will be a source
of pleasure; and because the want of it must,