It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the
extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form
their opinions from the writings of poets and romances. Nine times out
of ten, 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 dependant of some
part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the power of writers in
producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in
the cases of Dr. Johnson and Burke.... 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.--W. COBBETT. _Advice to Young Men and (incidentally) to
Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life._