He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles the reason; and we refuse to allow him to have authority over the mind of man; for he has no measure of greater and less, and is a maker of images and very far gone from truth.
But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the indictment--the power which poetry has of injuriously exciting the feelings.

When we hear some passage in which a hero laments his sufferings at tedious length, you know that we sympathize with him and praise the poet; and yet in our own sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as effeminate and unmanly (Ion).

Now, ought a man to feel pleasure in seeing another do what he hates and abominates in himself?
Is he not giving way to a sentiment which in his own case he would control ?--he is off his guard because the sorrow is another's; and he thinks that he may indulge his feelings without disgrace, and will be the gainer by the pleasure.

But the inevitable consequence is that he who begins by weeping at the sorrows of others, will end by weeping at his own.

The same is true of comedy,--you may often laugh at buffoonery which you would be ashamed to utter, and the love of coarse merriment on the stage will at last turn you into a buffoon at home.