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nor can apply its art to the benefit of the ignorant vulgar, where those distempers are in their most exasperated state. An epic

Poem is too abftrufe for the people; the moral is too much enveloped, the language too elevated for their apprehenfion; nor have they leifure, or application, to trace the confequences of ill-governed paffions, or erroneous principles, through the long feries of a voluminous work. The Drama is happily constituted for this purpose. Events are brought within the compass of a short period: precepts are delivered in the familiar way of difcourfe: the fiction is concealed, the allegory is realized; and Representation and Action take the place of cold unaffecting Narration. A Tragedy is a fable exhibited to the view, and rendered palpable to the fenses; and every decoration of the Stage is contrived to impose the delufion on the fpectator, by confpiring with the imitation. It is addreffed to the imagination, through which it opens to itself a communication with the heart, where it is to excite certain paffions and affections; each character being perfo

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perfonated, and each event exhibited, the attention of the audience is greatly captivated, and the imagination fo far affifts in the, delufion, as to fympathize in the reprefentation. To the Mufe of Tragedy, therefore, Mr. Pope has affigned the noble task, To wake the foul by tender ftrokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each fcene, and be what they behold. He afcribes fuch power to a well-wrought fcene, as to afk,

When Cato groans who does not wish to bleed?

He would not have fuppofed the death of Hector, or Sarpedon, could have produced an equal effect on any reader of the Iliad ; fuch enthusiasm is to be caught only from the Stage, and is the effect alone of strong-working fympathy, and paffions agitated by the peculiar force and activity of the dramatic manner. Writers of feeble genius, in their compofitions for the Stage, frequently deviate into the narrative and descriptive style; a fault for which nothing can atone; for the Drama

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Drama is a fpecies of poetry, as diftinct from the epic, as Statuary from Painting; and can no more claim that merit which fpecifically belongs to it, and conftitutes its perfection, from fine verfification, or any other poetical ornaments, than a ftatue can be rendered a fine fpecimen of fculpture, from being beautifully coloured, or highly polished. It is frivolous and idle, therefore, to infift on any little incidental and acceffory beauties, where the main part, the very conftitution of the thing, is defective. Yet on fuch trivial beauties do the French found all their pretenfions to fuperiority and excellence in the Drama.

According to Ariftotle, there can be no Tragedy without Action*. Mr. Voltaire confeffes, that fome of the most admired Tragedies, in France, are rather converfations, than representations of an action. It will hardly be allowed to those who fail in the most effential part of an art, to set their performances as models. Can they Arift. Chap. vi.

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who have robbed the Tragic Muse of all her virtue, and divefted her of whatsoever gives her a real interest in the human heart, require, we should adore her for the glitter of a few falfe brilliants, or the nice arrangement of frippery ornaments? If she wears any thing of intrinfic value, it has been borrowed from the ancients; but by these artists it is fo fantastically fashioned to modern modes, as to lofe all its original graces, and even that neceffary qualification of all ornaments, Fitness and Propriety. A French Tragedy is a tiffue of declamations, and laboured recitals of the catastrophe, by which the spirit 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 Representation.

Segnius irritant animos demiffa per aurem,
Quam quæ funt oculis fubjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipfe fibi tradit fpectator.

The business of the Drama is to excite

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fympathy and its effect on the fpectator depends on fuch a juftnefs of imitation, as fhall cause, to a certain degree, the fame paffions and affections, as if what was exhibited was real. We have observed narrative imitation to be too faint and feeble a means to excite paffion: declamation, ftill worse, plays idly on the furface of the subject, and makes the Poet, who should be concealed in the action, visible to the fpectator. In many works of art, Our pleasure 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, so often our fympathy with the Action on the Stage is fufpended. The pompous declamations of the French Theatre are mere rhetorical flourishes, fuch as an uninterested person might make on the state of the perfons in the drama. They affume the office of the Spectator by expreffing his feelings, instead of conveying to us the ftrong emotions and fenfations of the perfons

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