Note 58 — NO. VII.—SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1807.

Fair Penitent.] The story of this play, if told in its native language, would exhibit a scene of guilt and shame which no modest ear could listen to without shrinking with disgust; but, arrayed as it is, in all the splendor of harmonious, rich, and polished verse, it steals into the heart like some gay, luxurious, smooth-faced villain, and betrays it insensibly to immorality and vice; our very sympathy is enlisted on the side of guilt; and the piety of Altamont, and the gentleness of Lavinia, are lost in the splendid debaucheries of the “gallant, gay Lothario,” and the blustering, hollow repentance of the fair Calista, whose sorrow reminds us of that of Pope’s Heloise—“I mourn the lover, not lament the fault.” Nothing is more easy than to banish such plays from our stage. Were our ladies, instead of crowding to see them again and again repeated, to discourage their exhibition by absence, the stage would soon be indeed the school of morality, and the number of “Fair Penitents,” in all probability, diminish.