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little more abfurd than thofe poets, who fuppofe their dramas will be excellent if they are regulated by Ariftotle's clock. To bring within a limited time, and an affigned space, certain series of converfations (and French plays are little more) is no difficult matter; for that is the easiest part of every art perhaps, but in poetry without difpute, in which the connoiffeur can direct the artist.

I do not believe the critic imagined that a mere obedience to his laws of drama would make a good tragedy, tho' it might prevent a poet, more bold than judicious, from writing a very abfurd one. A painter can define the juft proportion of the human body, and the anatomist knows what mufcles constitute the ftrength of the limbs; but grace of motion, and exertion of strength, depend on the mind, which animates the form. The critic but fashions the body of a work; the poet muft add the foul, which gives force and direction to its actions and gef tures when one of thefe critics has attempted to finish a work by his own rules, he has rarely been able to convey into it one fpark of divine fire; and the hero of his piece, whom he defigned for a man, remains a cold inanimate ftatue; which, moving on the wood and wire of the great mafters in the mechanical part of the drama, presents to the fpectators a kind of heroic puppet-fhew. As thefe pieces take their rife in the fchool of criticism, they return thither again, and are as good fubjects for the ftudents in that art, as a dead body to the profeffors in phyfic, Moft minutely too have they been anatomifed in learned academies : but works, animated by genius,

will not abide this kind of diffection."

"Shakespear (continues our effayift) wrote at a time when learning was tinctured with pedantry; wit was unpolished, and mirth ill-bred. The court of Elizabeth fpoke a fcientific jargon, and a certain obfcurity of ftyle was univerfally affected. James brought an addition of pedantry, accompanied by indecent and indelicate manners and language. By contagion, or from complaifance to the tafte of the public, Shakespear falls fometimes into the fashionable mode of writing: but this is only by fits; for many parts of all his plays are written with the most noble, elegant, and uncorrupted fimplicity. Such is his merit, that the more juft and refined the taste of the nation has become, the more he has increased in reputation. He was approved by his own age, admired by the next, and is revered, and almost adored by the prefent. His merit is difputed by little wits, and his errors are the jefts of little critics; but there has not been a great poet, or great critic, fince his time, who has not fpoken of him with the highest veneration, Mr. Voltaire excepted. His tranflations often, his criticisms ftill oftener, prove he did not perfectly understand the words of the author; and therefore it is certain he could not enter into his meaning. He comprehended enough to perceive, he was unobfervant of fome established rules of compofition; the felicity, with which he performs what no rules can teach, efcapes him. Will not an intelligent fpectator admire the prodigious ftructures of StoneHenge, because he does not know by what law of mechanics they

were

were raifed? Like them, our author's works will remain for ever the greatest monuments of the amazing force of nature, which we ought to view as we do other prodigies, with an attention to, and admiration of their ftupendous parts, and proud irregularity of greatness."

Our author obferves, "That ri diculously has our poet, and ridiculoufly has our taste been reprefented, by a writer of univerfal fame; and through the medium of an almoft univerfal language. Superficial criticisms hit the level of fhallow minds, to whom a bon mot will appear reason, and an epigrammatic turn, argument; fo that many of our countrymen have haftily adopted this lively writer's opinion of the extravagence, and total want of defign in Shakespear's dramas. With the more learned, deep, and fober critics, he lies under one confiderable difadvantage. For copying nature, as he found it, in the bufy walks of human life, he drew from an original, with which the literati are feldom well acquainted. They perceive his portraits are not of the Grecian or of the Roman school: after finding them unlike to the dignified characters preserved in learned mufeums, they do not deign to enquire, whether they refemble the living perfons they were intended to reprefent. Among these connoiffeurs, whofe acquaintance with mankind is formed in the library, not in the street, the camp, or village, whatever is unpolished and uncouth paffes for fantaftic and abfurd, though, in fact, it is a faithful reprefentation of a really existing character."

This work, befides the introduc

tory difcourfe, contains eight ef fays, or differtations; on Dramatie Poetry; -on the Hiftorical Drama; -on the firft part of Henry IV.on the fecond part of Henry IV.on the Preternatural Beings:-on the Tragedy of Macbeth ;- -upon the Cinna of Corneille; - and upon the Death of Julius Cæfar.

The propriety, beauty, and elegance, of the following obfervations, in our author's effay on Dramatic Poetry, are peculiarly striking.

"According to Ariftotle, there can be no tragedy without action. Mr. Voltaire confeffes, that some of the most admired tragedies in France, are rather conversations, than reprefentations of an action. It will hardly be allowed to those who fail in the moft effential part of an art, to fet up their performances. as models. Can they who have robbed the Tragic Mufe of all her virtue, and divested her of whatsoever gave her a real interest in the human heart, require, we fhould adore her for the glitter of a few false brilliants, or the nice arrangement offrippery ornaments? If the wears any thing of intrinfic value, it has been borrowed from the ancients; but by these artists it is fo fantaftically fashioned to modern modes, as to lofe all its original graces, and even that neceffary qualification of all orna ments, fitnefs and propriety. A French tragedy is a tiffue of declamations, and laboured recitals of the catastrophe, by which the fpirit of the drama is greatly weakened and enervated, and the theatrical piece is deprived of that peculiar influence over the mind, which it derives from the vivid force of reprefentation.

Segnius

Segnius irritant animos demiffa

per aurem,

Quam que funt oculis fubjecta
fidelibus, et quæ
Ipfe fibi tradit spectator.

The bufinefs of the Drama is to excite fympathy; and its effect on the fpectator depends on fuch a juftnefs of imitation, as fhall caufe, to a certain degree, the fame paffions and affections, as if what was exhibited was real. We have obferved narrative imitation to be too faint and feeble a means to excite paffion declamation, ftill worse, plays idly on the furface of the fubject, and makes the poet, who fhould be concealed in the action, vifible to the fpectator. In many works of art, our pleafure arifes from a reflection on the art itself; and in a comparison, drawn by the mind, between the original and the copy before us. But here the art and the artist must not appear; for, as often as we recur to the poet, fo often our fympathy with the action on the ftage is fufpended. The pompous declamations of the French theatre, are mere rhetorical flourishes, fuch as an uninterested perfon might make on the state of the perfons in the drama. They affume the office of the fpectator by expreffing his feelings, instead of conveying to us the ftrong emotions and fenfations of the perfons under the preffure of distress. Experience informs us, that even the inarticulate groans,and involuntary convulfions of a creature in agonies, affect us much more, than any eloquent and elaborate defcription of its fituation, delivered in the propereft words, and moft fignificant geftures. Our pity is attendant on the paffion of the unhappy perfon, and on his own fenfe of

from the

his misfortunes. From defcription, report of a fpectator, we may make fome conjecture of his internal state of mind, and fo far we fhall be moved: but the direct and immediate way to the heart is by the fufferer's expreffion of his paffion. As there may be fome obfcurity in what I have faid on this fubject, I will endeavour to illuftrate the doctrine by examples.

;

Sophocles, in his admirable tragedy of dipus Coloneus, makes Edipus expoftulate with his undutiful fon. The injured parènt expofes the enormity of filial difobedience; fets forth the duties of this relation in a very strong and lively manner; but it is only by the vehemence with which he fpeaks of them, and the imprecations he utters against the delinquent fon, that we can guefs at the violence of his emotions therefore he excites more indignation at the conduct of Polynices, than fympathy with his own forrow; of which we can judge only as fpectators: for he has explained to us merely the external duties and relations of parent and child. The pangs of paternal tenderness, thus wounded, are more pathetically expreffed by King Lear, who leaves out whatever of this enormity is equally fenfible to the spectator, and immediately expofes to us his own internal feelings, when, in the bitterness of his foul, curfing his daughter's offspring, he adds,

That she may feel,

How fharper than a ferpent's tooth it is,

To have a thankless child.

By this we perceive, how deeply paternal affection is wounded by filial ingratitude.

In the play of King John, the legate

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As they had feen me with these
hangman's hands,
Listening their fear. I could not
fay, Amen,

When they did fay, God bless us!

Thefe expreffions open to us the internal state of the perfons interested, and never fail to command our fympathy. Shakespear feems to have had the art of the Dervise, in the Arabian tales, who could throw his foul into the body of another man, and be at once poffeffed of his fentiments, adopt his paffions, and rife to all the functions and feelings of his fituation. Shakespear was born in a rank of life, in which men indulge themfelves in a free expreffion of their paffions, with little regard to exterior appearance. This perhaps

made him more acquainted with the movements of the heart, and lefs knowing or obfervant of outward forms: against the one he often offends, he very rarely mifreprefents the other. The French tragedians, on the contrary, attend not to the nature of the man,

whom they reprefent, but to the

decorums of his rank: fo that their beft tragedies are made ridiculous, by changing the condition of the perfons of the drama ; which could not be fo easily effected, if they spoke the language of paffion, which in all ranks of men is much alike."

In the effay on the hiftorical drama, our author obferves, "That thofe dramas of Shakespear, which he diftinguishes by the name of his hiftories, being of an original kind and peculiar conftruction, cannot come within any rules, The office of the critic, in regard which are prior to their exiftence. to poetry, is like that of the grammarian and rhetorician in refpect to language: it is their bufinefs to fhew why fuch and fuch modes of fpeech are proper and graceful, others improper and ungraceful: but they pronounce on fuch words and expreffions only, as are actually extant.

If we were to give our readers every part of this effay which affords us pleasure, we should nearly tranfcribe the whole; the extracts we have given, will, we make no doubt, fufficiently excite the curiofity of all thofe who have not feen the original,

THE

THE

CONTENT S.

HISTORY of EUR o P E.

CHAP. I.

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CHA P. III.

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New confederacies formed in Poland upon the departure of the Ruffian troops
to the frontiers. Spirited manifefto by the nobility of the grand dutchy of
U

VOL. XII.

Lithua-

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