cordingly, many writers, who have no genius for drawing characters, make a shift to represent, tolerably well, an ordinary passion in its simple movements. But of all works of this kind, what is truly the most difficult, is a characteristical dialogue upon any philosophical subject: to interweave characters with reasoning, by suiting to the character of each speaker, a peculiarity not only of thought, but of expression, requires the perfection of genius, taste, and judgment.

How nice dialogue-writing is, will be evident, even without reasoning, from the miserable compositions of that kind found without number in all languages. The art of mimicing any, singularity in gesture or in voice, is a rare talent, though directed by sight and hearing, the acutest and most lively of our external senses: how much more rare must the talent be, of imitating characters and internal emotions, tracing all their different tints, and representing them in a lively manner by natural sentiments properly expressed? The truth is, such execution is too delicate for an ordinary genius: and for that reason, the bulk of writers, instead of expressing a passion as one does who feels it, content themselves with describing it in the language of a spectator. To awake passion by an internal effort merely, without any external cause, requires great sensibility: and yet that operation is necessary, no less to the writer than to the actor; because none but those who actually feel a passion, can represent it to the life. The writer's part is the more complicated: he must add composition to passion; and must, in the quickest succession, adopt every different character. But a very humble flight of imagination, may serve to convert a writer into a spectator; so as to figure, in some obscure manner, an action as passing in his sight and hearing. In that figured situation, being led naturally to write like a spectator, he entertains his readers with his own reflec

tions, with cool description, and florid declamation; instead of making them eye-witnesses, as it were, to a real event, and to every movement of genuine passion.* Thus most of our plays appear to be cast in the same mould; personages without character, the mere outlines of passion, a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style.†

This descriptive manner of representing passion, is a very cold entertainment: our sympathy is not raised by description; we must first be lulled into a dream of reality, and every thing must appear as passing in our sight.‡ Unhappy is the player of genius who acts a capital part in what may be termed a descriptive tragedy; after assuming the very passion that is to be represented, how is he cramped in action, when he must utter, not the sentiments of the passion he feels, but a cold description in the language of a bystander? It is that imperfection, I am persuaded, in the bulk of our plays, which confines our stage almost entirely to Shakspeare, notwithstanding his many irregularities. In our late English tragedies, we sometimes find sentiments tolerably well adapted to a plain passion: but we must not, in any of them, expect a sentiment expressive of character; and, upon that very

* In the Æneid, the hero is made to describe himself in the following words: Sum pius Æneas, fama super æthera notus. Virgil could never have been guilty of an impropriety so gross, had he assumed the personage of his hero, instead of uttering the sentiments of a spectator. Nor would Xenophon have made the following speech for Cyrus the younger, to his Grecian auxiliaries, whom he was leading against his brother Artaxerxes: "I have chosen you, O Greeks! my auxiliaries, not to enlarge my "army, for I have Barbarians without number; but because you surpass "all the Barbarians in valour and military discipline." This sentiment is Xenophon's, for surely Cyrus did not reckon his countrymen Barbarians. + "Chez Racine tout est sentiment; il a su faire parler chacun pour soi, "et c'est en cela qu'il est vraiment unique parmi les auteurs dramatiques "de sa nation." Rousseau.

See Chapter ii. Part i. Sect. 7.

account, our late performances of the dramatic kind are for the most part intolerably insipid.

Looking back upon what is said, I am in some apprehension of not being perfectly understood; for it is not easy to avoid obscurity in handling a matter so complicated; but I promise to set it in the clearest light, by adding example to precept. The first examples shall be of sentiments that appear the legitimate offspring of passion; to which shall be opposed what are descriptive only, and illegitimate and in making this comparison, I borrow my instances from Shakspeare and Corneille, who for genius in dramatic composition stand uppermost in the rolls of fame.

Shakspeare shall furnish the first example, being of sentiments dictated by a violent and perturbed passion:

Lear.

-Filial ingratitude!

Is it not, as if this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't?-But I'll punish home;
No, I'll weep no more. -In such a night,
To shut me out!—Pour on, I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Gonerill,
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all→→→
O! that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

Kent. Good, my Lord, enter here.

Lear. Pr'ythee, go in thyself, seek thine own ease,
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more :-but I'll go in ;
In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty-
Nay, get thee in; I'll pray, and then I'll sleep--
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness defend you
From seasons such as these? I have ta'en
VOL. I.

45

Too little care of this! take physic Pomp ;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

King Lear, Act III. Sc. 5.

I give another example of the same kind, expressing sentiments arising from remorse and despair:

Othello. Lo! I have a weapon :

A better never did itself sustain

Upon a soldier's thigh. I've seen the day,
That with this little arm, and this good sword,
I've made my way through more impediment
Than twenty times your stop. But, oh vain boast!
Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now.

Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd';
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
The very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear.
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires. Where should Othello go ?

Now-how dost thou look now? Oh ill-starr'd wench!
Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at compt,
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heav'n,
And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl;
Ev'n like thy chastity. O cursed slave!
Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heav'nly sight;
Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,
Wash me in steep down gulfs of liquid fire-

Oh, Desdemona! Desdemona ! dead! dead! oh! oh!

Othello, Act V. Sc. 9.

The sentiments here displayed flow so naturally from the passions represented, that we cannot conceive any imitation more perfect.

With regard to the French author, truth obliges me to acknowledge, that he describes in the style of a spectator, instead of expressing passion like one who feels it; which naturally betrays him into a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style.* It is scarce neces

* This criticism reaches the French dramatic writers in general, with very few exceptions: their tragedies, excepting those of Racine, are mostly, if not totally, descriptive. Corneille led the way; and later writers, imitating his manner, have accustomed the French ear to a style, formal, pompous, declamatory, which suits not with any passion. Hence, to bur lesque a French tragedy, is not more difficult than to burlesque a stiff solemn fop. The facility of the operation has in Paris introduced a singular amusement, which is, to burlesque the more successful tragedies in a sort of farce, called a parody. La Motte, who himself appears to have been sorely galled by some of these productions, acknowledges, that no more is necessary to give them currency but barely to vary the dramatis persona, and instead of kings and heroes, queens and princesses, to substitute tinkers and tailors, milkmaids and seamstresses. The declamatory style, so different from the genuine expression of passion, passes in some measure unobserved, when great personages are the speakers: but in the mouths of the vul gar the impropriety with regard to the speaker as well as to the passion represented, is so remarkable as to become ridiculous. A tragedy, where every passion is made to speak in its natural tone, is not liable to be thus burlesqued: the same passion is by all men expressed nearly in the same manner and, therefore, the genuine expressions of a passion cannot be ridiculous in the mouth of any man who is susceptible of the passion.

It is a well known fact, that to an English ear, the French actors appear to pronounce with too great rapidity: a complaint much insisted on by Cibber in particular, who had frequently heard the famous Baron upon the French stage. This may in some measure be attributed to our want of facility in the French tongue; as foreigners generally imagine that every language is pronounced too quick by natives. But that it is not the sole cause, will be probable from a fact directly opposite, that the French are not a little disgusted with the languidness, as they term it, of the English pronunciation. May not this difference of taste be derived from what is observed above? The pronunciation of the genuine language of a passion is necessarily directed by the nature of the passion, particularly by the slowness or celerity of its progress: plaintive passions, which are the most frequent in tragedy, having a slow motion, dictate a slow pronunciation in declamation, on the contrary, the speaker warms gradually; and, as he warms, he naturally accelerates his pronunciation. But, as the