and represented them with fentiments and manners agreeable to their hiftorical characters; and to those things, which common fame had divulged of them, muft have engaged the attention of the fpectator, and affifted in that delufion of his Imagination, from whence his fympathy with the story muft arife. We are affected by the catastrophe of a Stranger, we lament the destiny of an Edipus, and the misfortunes of an Hecuba; but the little peculiarities of a character touch us only where we have fome nearer affinity to the perfon, than the common relation of humanity: nor, unless we are particularly acquainted with the original character, can thefe diftinguishing marks have the merit of heightening the refemblance, and animating the portrait.

We are apt to confider Shakespear only as a Poet; but he is certainly one of the greatest moral Philofophers that ever lived.

Euripides

Euripides was highly esteemed by the ancients for the moral fentences, with which he has interspersed the speeches in his tragedies; and certainly many general truths are expreffed in them with a fententious brevity. But he rather collects general opinions into maxims, and gives them a form, which is easily retained by memory, than extracts any new observations from the characters in action, which every reader of penetration will find the invariable practice of our au→ thor; and when he introduces a general maxim, it seems drawn from him by the occafion. As it arifes out of the action, it lofes itself again in it, and remains not, as in other writers, an ambitious ornament glittering alone, but is fo connected as to be an useful paffage very naturally united with the ftory. The examples of this are fo frequent, as to occur almost in every scene of his best plays. But left I should be misunderstood, I will cite one from the fecond part of Henry IV. where the general maxim is, that

An

An habitation giddy and unfure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

YORK.

Let us on:

And publish the occafion of our arms.

The commonwealth is fick of their own choice: Their over greedy love hath furfeited.

An habitation giddy and unfure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

Oh thou fond many! with what loud applause,
Did'ft thou beat heav'n with bleffing Bolingbroke,
Before he was, what thou would't have him be!
And now, being trim'd up in thine own defires,
Thou, beaftly feeder, art fo full of him,

That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.
So, fo, thou common dog, didft thou difgorge
Thy glutton bofom of the royal Richard,

And now thou would'st eat thy dead vomit up,
And howl'ft to find it. What truft in these times?
They that when Richard liv'd would have him die,
Are now become enamour'd on his grave:
Thou that throwd'ft duft upon his goodly head,

When through proud London he came fighing on
After the admired heels of Bolingbroke,

Cry'st now, O earth, yield us that king again,
And take thou this.

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Moral

Moral reflections may be more frequent in this kind of Drama, than in the other fpecies of Tragedy, where, if not very short, they teaze the spectator, whofe mind is intent upon, and impatient for the cataftrophe; and unless they arife neceffarily out of the circumstances the perfon is in, they appear unnatural. For in the preffure of extreme distress, men are intent only on themselves and on the prefent exigence. The various interefts and characters in these hiftorical plays, and the mixture of the comic, weaken the operations of pity and terror, but introduce various opportunities of conveying moral inftruction, as occafion is given to a variety of reflections and obfervations, more useful in common life than those drawn from the conditions of kings and heroes, and perfons greatly fuperior to us by nature or fortune.

As there are poets of various talents, and readers of various taftes, one would rather wish that all the fields of Parnaffus might

be

T

be free and open to men of genius, than that a proud and tyrannical fpirit of criticism should controul us in the use of any of them. Those which we should have judged most barren, have brought forth noble productions when cultivated by an able hand.

Even fairy land has produced the Sublime; and the wild regions of Romance have fometimes yielded just and genuine fentiments.

To write a perfect tragedy, a Poet must be poffeffed of the Pathetic or the Sublime; or perhaps to attain the utmost excellence, must, by a more uncommon felicity, be able to give the Sublime the finest touches of paffion and tenderness, and to the Pathetic the dignity of the Sublime. The straining a moderate or feeble genius to these arduous tasks, has produced the most abfurd bombaft, and the most pitiable nonsense that has ever been uttered. Ariftotle's rules, like Ulyffes' bow, are held forth to all pretenders to Tragedy, who as unfortunate as Penelope's

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