every thing that Providence affords us. He adds; "What is the destiny of man? to fill up the measure of his fufferings, and drink up the bitter draught."*-Such are the fentiments interwoven in a work intended ftrongly to affect the mind, and in which the hero is made to act in conformity to these sentiments. The action itself, I fhould hope, would fhew the error and futility of the reasoning; and I will not pass fo ill a compliment on the judgment of the reader, as to analyse the paffage I have quoted; the fophiftry I should think too glaring to mislead a mind not totally deftitute of all moral cultivation and yet I am sorry to fay, we have had inftances, in which, together with the influence of the example, it has operated to the destruction of indivi : duals, * See the Sorrows of Werter, Letter LXVIII. duals, particularly among the other fex, who, from their virtues and attainments, muft otherwise have become happy in themfelves, and ornamental to society. It would be painful to be particular; but, in support of what I have faid, I cannot avoid taking notice of a single fact, well known in the metropolis, that a young and amiable lady who" rafhly ventured on the unknown fhore," had the Sorrows of Werter under her pillow when she was found in the sleep of death. Thus, in a story, a poem, or a fable, the man of genius fends forth the firebrands of infidelity, and arms his fellow-creatures with despair to anticipate the ftroke of death. Pretending to uncommon liberality of fentiment, he discovers the weakness, without the virtue, of that monaftic fuperftition which represents the world as a theatre of mifery and continual fufferings.* This is not a proper place for me to controvert an opinion, were it worth controverting, which, I trust, every reader knows and feels to be falfe. It was very artful in the author, to infinuate, that his hero was "ftrongly imprefsed with sentiments of religion." To have obtruded opinions in direct contradiction to those sentiments, without some sophistical allufion to them, would have fhocked, inftead of converting his readers, to become the disciples of that fell despair which whets the dagger of felf-affaffination. It is need lefs * The fallacy of this doctrine is expofed with irrefutable argument, conveyed in the captivating form of a vifion, and in all the beauty of language, by the RAMBLER, No. 44. less for me to observe, that he who is really 66 impreffed with fentiments of religion," will not readily be guilty of any crime, much less of the greatest. In the Preface to the Sorrows of Werter, we are told, that the author had been called the apologist of Suicide, "by those who abfurdly ascribed to him the erroneous sentiments which he has given to his principal character." Here feems to be a diftinction without a difference. If the author gave his hero those sentiments, furely they are his own; and if they are erroneous, be whose they will, why are they published without their antidote ?—As a translator, the Editor tells us, that, to avoid giving offence, several exceptionable sentiments are omitted. Had the author been influenced by fimilar motives, the work would never have appeared; at at least he might have indulged us with the efforts of his genius, without fhocking us with the depravity of his principles. The moft extensive evil a man can do, is to publifh a bad book. The letters of Werter having been read with avidity, I am to folicit public indulgence for thofe of the amiable Charlotte. They commence at the time Werter's commence, and were written by her to a female friend, with whom fhe correfponded both before and after the death of Werter, Though they are, in general, miscellaneous, they partake more of the nature of a novel than thofe of Werter. I might fay, that the female mind is more given to narrative than to reflection; the letters of Charlotte, however, will not warrant the affertion: they abound with reflections which, if they do not |