and mafques, all fymbolical and allegorical. -Our stage rose from hymns to the Virgin, and encomiums on the Patriarchs and Saints: 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 song 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 shone forth, illumined by every kind of intellectual light.

Shakespear, in the dark shades 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 best his fierce and barbarous audience, when he raised the bloody ghost, or reared the warlike standard, His choice of these fubjects was judicious, if we confider the

times in which he lived; his management of them fo 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 metaphyfical air to his works. He compofed many pieces of the allegorical kind, established on the Grecian mythology, and rendered his playhoufe a perfect pantheon. Shakespear 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, Sublimity and its appropriated powers and charms to Fiction; and in both these arts he is unequalled.--The Cataline and Sejanus of Johnfon are cold, crude, heavy pieces; turgid where they should be great; bombast where they should be fublime; the fentiments extravagant; the manners exaggerated; and the whole undramatically conducted by long fenatorial speeches, and flat plagiarisms from K 4 Tacitu

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

Æfchylus, with greater impetuofity of genius than even Shakespear, 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 à light; causes affright in the spectator, but never rifes to the imparting that unlimited terror which we feel when Macbeth to his bold addrefs,

* Prologue to the Masque 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 sphere 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 fphere, 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 lofe 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 conscience, when they were represented as obliged to have recourfe to the ordinary method of revenge, by being witnesses and pleaders in a court of juftice, 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 circumstances remorse suggested 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 Clytemneftra to death, would plead for him with his judges; their voices being equal for abfolving or punishing, wisdom gives her vote for abfolving him.

The fentiment that appears fo odd in the mouth of the goddess, from these confidera