fon and humanity. In the days of Sophocles and Euripides, the traces of this favage practice were ftill recent; and the Athenians, through the prevalence of custom, could without disgust suffer human facrifices to be represented in their theatre. The I4 phigenia of Euripides is a proof of this fact. But a human facrifice, being altoge ther inconfiftent with modern manners, as producing horror instead of pity, cannot with any propriety be introduced upon a modern ftage. I must therefore condemn the Iphigenia of Racine, which, instead of the tender and fympathetic paffions, fubftitutes difguft and horror. But this is not all. Another objection occurs against every fable that deviates so remarkably from improved notions and fentiments. If it fhould even command our belief, by the authority of genuine hiftory, its fictitious and unnatural appearance, however, would prevent its taking fuch hold of the mind as to produce a perception of reality*. A human facrifice is fo unnatural, and to us fo improbable,

* See chap. 2. part 1. fect. 6.

that

that few will be affected with the reprefentation of it more than with a fairy tale. The objection first mentioned strikes also against the Phedra of this author. The queen's paffion for her stepson, being unnatural and beyond all bounds, creates averfion and horror rather than compaffion. The author in his preface obferves, that the queen's paffion, however unnatural, was the effect of destiny and the wrath of the gods; and he puts the fame excufe in her own mouth. But what is the wrath of a heathen god to us Christians? We acknowledge no desti ny in paffion; and if love be unnatural, it never can be relished. A fuppofition, like what our author lays hold of, may poffibly cover flight improprieties; but it will never engage our fympathy for what appears to `us frantic or extravagant.

Neither can I relish the catastrophe of this tragedy. A man of tafte may peruse, without difguft, a Grecian performance describing a fea-monster sent by Neptune to destroy Hippolytus, He confiders, that such a story might agree with the religious creed of Greece; and, entering into ancient opiVOL. II. nions,

P

nions, may be pleased with the story, as what probably had a strong effect upon a Grecian audience. But he cannot have the fame indulgence for fuch a representation upon a modern ftage; for no story which carries a violent air of fiction, can ever move us in any confiderable degree.

In the Coëphores of Efchylus*, Oreftes is made to fay, that he was commanded by Apollo to avenge his father's murder; and yet if he obeyed, that he was to be delivered to the furies, or be ftruck with fome horrible malady. The tragedy accordingly concludes with a chorus, deploring the fate of Oreftes, obliged to take vengeance against a mother, and involved thereby in a crime against his will. It is impoffible for any man at prefent to accommodate his mind to opinions fo irrational and absurd, which must disgust him in perusing even a Grecian ftory. Among the Greeks again, grofsly fuperftitious, it was a common opinion, that the report of a man's death was a prefage of his death; and Oreftes, in

Act 2.

the

the first act of Electra, spreading a report

of his own death. in order to blind his mother and her adulterer, is even in this cafe affected with the prefage. Such imbecility can never find grace with a modern audience. It may indeed produce fome degree of compaffion for a people afflicted to such a degree with abfurd terrors, fimilar to what is felt in perufing a defcription of the Hottentotes: but manners of this kind will not intereft our affections, nor excite any degree of focial concern...

O intimately connected are the foul and body, that there is not a fingle agitation in the former, but what produceth a vifible effect upon the latter. There is, at the fame time, a wonderful uniformity in this operation; each clafs of emotions being invariably attended with an external appearance peculiar to itself *. Thefe external appearances or figns, may not improperly be confidered as a natural language, expreffing to all beholders the feveral emotions and paffions as they arife in the heart. We perceive difplay'd externally, hope, fear, joy, grief: we can read the character of a man in his face; and

Omnis enim motus animi, fuum quemdam à natura habet vultum et fonum et geftum. Cicero, 1. 3. De oratore.

beauty,