and mafques, all fymbolical and allegorical. -Our ftage rofe from hymns to the virgin, and encomiums on the patriarchs and faints: as the Grecian tragedies from the hymns to Bacchus. Our early poets added narration and action to this kind of pfalmody, as Æfchylus had done to the fong of the goat. Much more rapid indeed was the progress of the Grecian stage towards perfection.. Philofophy, poetry, eloquence, all the fine arts, were in their meridian glory, when the drama first began to dawn at Athens, and gloriously it fhone forth, illumined by every kind of intellectual light.

Shakespear, in the dark fhades of Gothic barbarism, had no refources but in the very phantoms that walked the night of ignorance and fuperftition: or in touching the latent paffions of civil rage and difcord; fure to please beft his fierce and barbarous audience, when he raised the bloody ghoft, or reared the warlike ftandard. His choice of these fubjects was judicious, if we confider the

times

times in which he lived; his management of them so masterly, that he will be admired in all times.

In the fame age, Ben. Johnfon, more proud of his learning than confident of his genius, was defirous to give a metaphysical air to his compofitions. He compofed many pieces of the allegorical kind, established on the Grecian mythology, and rendered his play-house a perfect pantheon.- -Shakefpear difdained these quaint devices; an admirable judge of human nature, with a capacity most extenfive, and an invention most happy, he contented himself with giving dramatic manners to hiftory, fublimity and its appropriated powers and charms to fiction; and in both thefe arts he is unequalled.—The Catiline and Sejanus of Johnfon are cold, crude, heavy pieces; turgid where they should be great; bombaft where they should be fublime the fentiments extravagant; the manners exaggerated; and the whole undramatically conducted by long senatorial speeches, and flat plagiarisms from Tacitus

K 4

;

Tacitus and Salluft.

Such of this author's

pieces as he boasts to be grounded on antiquity and folid learning, and to lay hold on removed myfteries*, have neither the majesty of Shakespear's ferious fables, nor the pleafing sportfulness and poetical imagination of his fairy tales. Indeed if we compare our countryman, in this refpect, with the most admired writers of antiquity, we shall, perhaps, not find him inferior to them.

Æfchylus, with greater impetuofity of genius than even our countryman, makes bold incurfions into the blind chaos of mingled allegory and fable, but he is not fo happy in diffufing the folemn fhade; in cafting the dim, religious light that should reign there. When he introduces his furies, and other fupernatural beings, he expofes them by too glaring a light; causes affright in the fpectator, but never rifes to imparting that unlimited terror which we feel when Macbeth to his bold addrefs,

* Prologue to the Mafque of Queens.

How

How now! ye fecret, foul, and midnight hags,

What is't ye do?

is answered,

A deed without a name.

The witches of the foreft are as important in the tragedy of Macbeth, as the Eumenides in the drama of Æfchylus; but our poet is infinitely more dexterous and judicious in the conduct of their part. The fecret, foul, and midnight hags are not introduced into the caftle of Macbeth; they never appear but in their allotted region of folitude and night, nor act beyond their fphere of ambiguous prophecy, and malignant forcery. The Eumenides, fnoring in the temple of Apollo, and then appearing as evidences against Oreftes in the Areopagus, seem both acting out of their sphere, and below their character. It was the appointed office of the venerable goddeffes, to avenge the crimes unwhipt of juftice, not to demand the public trial of guilty men. They must lose much of the fear and reverence in which they were held

for

for their fecret influence on the mind, and

the terrors they could inflict on criminal confcience, when they were reprefented as obliged to have recourse to the ordinary method of revenge, by being witnesses and pleaders in a court of justice, to obtain the corporal punishment of the offender. Indeed, it is poffible, that the whole story of this play might be allegorical, as thus, that Oreftes, haunted by the terrors, which pursue the guilty mind, confeffed his crime to the Areopagus, with all the aggravating circumftances remorfe fuggested to him, from a pious defire to expiate his offence, by fubmitting to whatever sentence this refpectable affembly fhould pronounce for that purpose. The oracle, which commanded him to put Clytemnestra to death, would plead for him with his judges: their voices being equal for abfolving or punishing, wisdom gives her vote for absolving him.

Thus confidered, what appears fo odd in the mouth of the goddefs, that fhe is little affected