under the pressure of diftrefs. 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 properest words, and moft fignificant geftures. Our pity is then attendant on the paffion of the unhappy person, and on his own sense of his misfortunes. From defcription, from the report of a Spectator, 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 Sufferer'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 Edipus Coloneus, makes dipus ́expoftulate with his undutiful fon. The injured parent exposes the enormity of filial disobedience; fets forth the duties of this relation in a very ftrong and lively manner; but it is only by

the

the vehemence with which he speaks of them, and the imprecations he utters against the delinquent fon, that we can guess 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 Spectators: for he has explained to us merely the external duties and relations of Parent and Child. The pangs of paternal tendernefs, thus wounded, are more pathetically expreffed by King Lear, who leaves out whatever of this enormity is equally fenfible to the fpectator, and immediately exposes 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 thanklefs child.

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

In the play of King John, the legate offers many arguments of confolation to Conftance, on the lofs of Arthur; they appear, to the Spectator, reasonable, till she so strongly expreffes the peculiar tendernefs of maternal love, by answering,

He fpeaks to me that never had a fon.

One might be made to conceive, in fome degree, the horrors of a murderer, under whose knife the bleeding victim is expiring in agonies, by a description of the unhappy object; but how fully, and how forcibly is the confcioufnefs of guilt expreffed by Macbeth, when, fpeaking of the grooms who lay near Duncan, he fays,

MACBETH.

One cry'd, God blefs us! and Amen! the other;
As they had feen me with thefe hangman's hands,
Listening their fear. I could not fay, Amen,
When they did fay, God blefs us!

Thefe

Thefe expreffions open to us the internal ftate of the perfons interested, and never fail to command our sympathy. Shakespear feems to have had the art of the Dervife, 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 rise to all the functions and feelings of his fituation.

Shakespear was born in a rank of life, in which men indulge themselves in a free expreffion of their paffions, with little regard to exterior appearance. This perhaps made him more acquainted with the emotions of the heart, and lefs knowing or observant of outward forms: against the one he often offends, he very rarely mifrepresents 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 best tragedies are made ridiculous, by changing the condition of the perfons of the drama; which could

not be so easily effected, if they spoke the language of paffion, which in all ranks of men is much alike. This kind of exterior representation falls intirely short of the intention of the Drama: and indeed many Plays are little more than Poems rehearsed; and the theatrical decorations are used rather to improve the Spectacle, than to affift the Drama, of which the Poet remains the apparent hero. We are told by a French Critic, that the great pleasure of their audience arifes from a reflection on the difficulty of rhyming in that language.-If that be the cafe, it is plain neither the French Tragedians endeavour at, nor their Audience expect from them, the true perfections of Drama. For, by the fame rule, if Hercules was represented under the difficulties of performing any of the tasks enjoined by Euryftheus, the attention of the Audience would not be engaged so much to the means by which he atchieved his heroic labours, as to the fweat and toil of the Poet in his closet, in afforting male and female rhymes. We have already remarked, that the more we revert from the

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