hurricane from the beginning to the end,-and every actor seemed to be hastening on the day of judgment.

"Let every member be made for its own head," says our author; not a withered hand to a young face. So, in the persons of a play, whatsoever is said or done by any of them, must be consistent with the manners which the poet has given them distinctly; and even the habits must be proper to the degrees and humours of the persons, as well as in a picture. He who entered in the first act a young man, like Pericles, Prince of Tyre, must not be in danger in the fifth act, of committing incest with his daughter; nor an usurer, without great probability and causes of repentance, be turned into a cutting Moorecraft.

4

I am not satisfied that the comparison betwixt the two arts in the last paragraph is altogether so

4 Our author has expressly attributed PERICLES to Shakspeare, and supposed it one of his earliest produc

tions:

Shakspeare's own muse his PERICLES first bore,

"The PRINCE OF TYRE was elder than the Moor." In the latter notion, however, he was, I think, mistaken : for whatever share Shakspeare had in its rifacimento, appears to have been contributed some years after King James's accession to the throne. See vol. i. p. 259, and P. 295, n.

5 Moorecraft is a usurer, in THE SCORNFUL LADY, a comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher; who becomes a convert in the last scene. A cutter, in old language, signified -a boisterous swaggerer.

just as it might have been; but I am sure of this which follows.

pear

"The principal figure of the subject must apin the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to distinguish it from the rest, which are only its attendants."—Thus, in a tragedy, or an epick poem, the hero of the piece must be advanced foremost to the view of the reader or spectator: he must outshine the rest of all the characters; he must appear the prince of them, like the sun in the Copernican system, encompassed with the less noble planets: because the hero is the centre of the main action; all the lines from the circumference tend to him alone: he is the chief object of pity in the drama, and of adıniration in the epick poem.

As in a picture, besides the principal figures which compose it, and are placed in the midst of it, there are less groups or knots of figures disposed at proper distances, which are parts of the piece, and seem to carry on the same design in a more inferior manner;-so, in epick poetry there are episodes, and a chorus in tragedy, which are members of the action, as growing out of it, not inserted into it. Such in the ninth book of the ENEIDS is the episode of Nisus and Euryalus. The adventure belongs to them alone; they alone are the objects of compassion and admiration; but their business which they carry on, is the general concernment of the Trojan camp, then beleaguered by Turnus and the Latins, as the Chris

tians were lately by the Turks. They were to advertise the chief hero of the distresses of his subjects occasioned by his absence, to crave his succour, and solicit him to hasten his return.

The Grecian tragedy was at first nothing but a chorus of singers; afterwards one actor was introduced, which was the poet himself, who entertained the people with a discourse in verse, betwixt the pauses of the singing. This succeeding with the people, more actors were added, to make the variety the greater; and in process of time, the chorus only sung betwixt the acts, and the Coryphæus, or chief of them, spoke for the rest, as an actor concerned in the business of the play.

Thus tragedy was perfected by degrees; and being arrived at that perfection, the painters might probably take the hint from thence of adding groups to their pictures. But as a good picture may be without a group, so a good tragedy may subsist without a chorus, notwithstanding any reasons which have been given by Dacier to the contrary.

Monsieur Racine has, indeed, used it in his ESTHER; but not that he found any necessity of it, as the French critick would insinuate. The chorus at St. Cyr was only to give the young ladies an occasion of entertaining the King with vocal musick, and of commending their own voices. The play itself was never intended for the publick stage, nor without disparagement to the learned author, could possibly have succeeded

there; and much less the translation of it here. Mr. Wycherley, when we read it together, was of my opinion in this, or rather I of his; for it becomes me so to speak of so excellent a poet, and so great a judge." But since I am in this place,

6 Our author, it is observable, omits no opportunity of commending Wycherley, on whom the encomiums lavished by his contemporaries are perhaps at least equal to his desert.

He almost entirely lost his memory, in consequence of a fever, which he had about the year 1678, when he was near forty years old. "He had (says Pope) this odd particularity in him, from the loss of his memory, that the same chain of thought would return into his mind at the distance of two or three years, without his remembering that it had been there before. Thus perhaps he would write one year an encomium upon avarice, (for he loved paradoxes,) and a year or two after in dispraise of liberty; and in both, the words only would differ, and the thoughts be as much alike, as two medals of different metals out of the same mould.

"He used to read himself asleep o'nights, either in Montagne, Rochefoucauld, Seneca, or Gratian; for these were his four favourite authors. He would read one or other of them in the evening, and the next morning perhaps write a copy of verses on some subject similar to what he had been reading, and have several of their thoughts, only expressed in a different turn: and that without knowing that he was obliged to them for any one thought in the whole poem. I have experienced this in him several times, (for I visited him for a whole winter almost every evening and morning,) and look upon it as one of the strangest phænomenons that ever I observed in the human mind." Spence's ANECDOTES.

as Virgil says, spatiis exclusus iniquis, that is, shortened in my time, I will give no other reason, than that it is impracticable on our stage. A new theatre, much more ample and much deeper, must be made for that purpose, besides the cost of sometimes forty or fifty habits, which is an expence too large to be supplied by a company of actors. It is true, I should not be sorry to see a chorus on a theatre more than as large and as deep again as ours, built and adorned at a King's charges; and on that condition, and another, which is, that my hands were not bound behind me, as now they are,' I should not despair of making such a tragedy as might be both instructive and delightful, according to the manner of the Grecians.

To make a sketch, or a more perfect model of a picture, is, in the language of poets, to draw up the scenary of a play; and the reason is the same for both; to guide the undertaking, and to preserve the remembrance of such things, whose natures are difficult to retain.

To avoid absurdities and incongruities, is the same law established for both arts. The painter is not to paint a cloud at the bottom of a picture, but in the uppermost parts; nor the poet to place what is proper to the end or middle, in the beginning of a poem. I might enlarge on this; but there are few poets or painters, who can be sup

7 By the translation of Virgil, in which he was now engaged.