To all thefe Beings our Poet has affigned tasks, and appropriated manners adapted to their imputed difpofitions and characters; which are continually developing through the whole piece, in a series of operations conducive to the catastrophe. They are not brought in as fubordinate or cafual agents, but lead the action, and govern the fable; in which respect our countryman has entered more into theatrical propriety than the Greek tragedians.

Every fpecies of poetry has its diftinct duties and obligations. The drama does not, like the epic, admit of episode, unneceffary persons, or things incredible; for, as it is obferved by a critic of great ingenuity and taste, *"that which paffes in Reprefen"tation, and challenges, as it were, the "fcrutiny of the eye, must be truth itself, or "fomething very nearly approaching to it." It should indeed be what our Imagination will adopt, though our Reason would reject

* Hurd, on Dramatic Imitation.

it.

it. Great caution and dexterity are required in the dramatic Poet, to give an air of reality to fictitious existence.

In the bold attempt to give to airy nothing a local habitation and a perfon, regard must be had to fix it in fuch scenes, and to display it in fuch actions, as are agreeable to the popular opinion.-Witches holding their fabbath, and faluting paffengers on the blasted heath; ghosts, at the midnight hour, vifiting the glimpses of the moon, and whispering a bloody fecret, from propriety of place and action, derive a credibility very propitious to the scheme of the Poet. Reddere perfona-convenientia cuique, cannot be less his duty in regard to these superior and metaphyfical, than to human characters. Indeed, from the invariableness of their natures, a greater confiftency and uniformity is neceffary; but most of all, as the belief of their intervention depends entirely on their manners and fentiments fuiting with the preconceived opinion of them.

The magician Prospero raising a storm; witches performing infernal rites; or any other exertion of the fuppofed powers and qualities of the agent, were easily credited by the vulgar.

The genius of Shakespear informed him that poetic fable must rise above the fimple tale of the nurse; therefore he adorns the Beldame, Tradition, with flowers gathered on claffic ground, but ftill wifely fuffering thofe fimples of her native foil, to which the established fuperftition of her country has attributed a magic fpell, to be predominant. Can any thing be more poetical than Profpero's address to his attendant fpirits before he difmiffes them?

PROSPERO.

Ye elves of hills, brooks, ftanding lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the fands with printless foot
Do chafe the ebbing Neptune; and do fly him
When he comes back; ye demy-puppets, that,
By the moonshine, the green four ringlets make,

Whereof

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice

To hear the folemn curfew; by whofe aid
(Weak masters tho' ye be) I have bedimm'd
The noon-tide fun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green-fea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the ftrong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the fpurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have wak'd their fleepers; op'd, and let them forth,
By my fo potent art.

Here the popular stories concerning the power of magicians are agreeably collected. The incantations of the witches in Macbeth are more folemn and terrible than thofe of the Erichtho of Lucan, or of the Canidia of Horace. It may be faid, indeed, that Shakespear had an advantage derived from the more direful character of his national fuperftitions.

A cele

A celebrated writer, in his ingenious letters on Chivalry, has obferved, that the Gothic manners, and Gothic superstitions, are more adapted to the ufes of poetry, than the Grecian. The devotion of those times was gloomy and fearful, not being purged of the terrors of the Celtic fables. The Prieft often availed himself of the dire inventions of his predeceffor, the Druid. The church of Rome adopted many of the Celtic fuperftitions; others, which were not established by it, as points of faith, ftill maintained a traditional authority among the vulgar. Climate, temper, modes of life, and inftitutions of government, seem all to have confpired to make the fuperftitions of the Celtic nations melancholy and terrible. Philosophy had not mitigated the aufterity of ignorant devotion, or tamed the fierce fpirit of enthusiasm. As the Bards, who were our philofophers and poets, pretended to be poffeffed of the dark fecrets of magic and divination, they certainly encouraged the ignorant credulity, and anxious fears, to which fuch impof

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