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temper, with delicacy of sentiment and a well principled mind, tempted, in the extremity of distress, to join with unworthy men in the proposed commission of a detestable deed; and afterwards, under one of the severest trials that human fortitude can be called upon to endure, bearing himself up, not with the proud and lofty firmness of a hero, but with the struggles of a man, who, conscious of the weakness of nature within him, feels diffident of himself to the last, and modestly aims at no more than what, being a soldier and the son of a brave father, he considers as respectable and becoming. One who aspires not to admiration but shrinks from contempt; and who being naturally brave in the field, and of a light buoyant disposition, bears up throughout with an animation and cheerfulness by no means inconsistent with a considerable degree of the dread of death, when called upon to encounter it with deliberation and certainty. To him I have opposed the character of a young man, in whom, though with some good affections, there is a foundation of natural depravity, greatly strengthened by the bad education he has received from an absurdly indulgent mother, brought by his crimes to an untimely end, and meeting it with a very different spirit.
Of the characters of the two principal women in this piece, opposed to two women of a very different description I shall say nothing. The second and inferior persons of the drama I have endeavoured to delineate with sufficient discrimination to
