reform but to conciliate; and Dr. Johnson's expreflion is not the lefs true for its quaintness; They that live to please, must please to live.” To this neceffary conformity to the manners of the audience is owing the introduction of love into almost all our dramatic compofitions; and those, as might be expected, are most in favour with the young, where this paffion is allowed the moft extenfive influence, and the most unlimited power. It was this which, when it was the fashion for genteel people to pay attention to Tragedies, drew fuch audiences to Lee's Theodofius, and to Dryden's Anthony and Cleopatra, where the length of the fpeeches, and the thinnefs of the incidents, would have been as tiresome to them as a fermon, had it not been for a tenderness and an extravagance of that paffion, which every girl thought she could feel, and believed fhe could understand. The moral confequences of such a Drama it is unneceffary to question. Even where this paffion is purified and refined to its utmost degree, it may be fairly held, that every fpecies of compofition, whether narrative or dramatic, which places the only felicity of life in fuccefsful love, is unfavourable to the strength and purity of a young mind. It holds forth that fingle object to the ambition and pursuit of both fexes, and thus tends to enfeeble and reprefs every other exertion. This increases a fource of weakness and corruption, which it is the bufinefs of a good inftructor to correct and overcome, by setting before the minds of his pupils other objects, other attainments, of a nobler and lefs selfish kind. But in that violence, in that tyranny of dominion, with which Love is invested in many of our Tragedies, it overbears every virtue and every duty. The obligations of justice and of humanity fink before it. The king, the chief, the patrict, forgets his people, his followers, and his country; while parents and children mention the dearest objects of natural attachment only to lead them in the triumph of their love. An It is the bufinefs of Tragedy to exhibit the paffions, that is, the weaknesses of men. cient Tragedy fhewed them in a simple manner; virtue and vice were strongly and diftinctly marked, wisdom and weaknefs were eafily difcriminated; and though vice might be fometimes palliated and weakness excufed, the fpectator could always difcover the character of each. But in the modern Drama there is an uncertain fort of outline, a blended colouring, by which the distinction of these objects is frequently loft. The refinement of modern audiences calls for fhades of character more delicate than thofe which the Stage formerly exhi bited; the confequence is, that the bounds of right and wrong are often fo uncertainly marked as not to be eafily diftinguifhed; and if the powers of poetry, or the eloquence of fentiment, should be on the fide of the latter, it will require a greater firmness of mind than youth or inexperience is mafter of, to refift it. Reafon condemns every fort of weakness; but paffion, enthusiasm, and fickly fenfibility, have dignified certain weakneffes with the name of amiable; and the young, of whom some are fufceptible, and others affect susceptibility, think it often an honour to be subject to their control. In Tragedy, or tragic writing, they often find fuch characters for their imitation. Such characters, being various, complicated, and fluctuating, are the properest for Tragedy. The poets have not neglected to avail themselves of that circumstance: their dramas are filled with fuch characters, who shift the hue and colour of their minds, according to the change of fituation or the variety of incident; or fometimes, whofe minds, in the hands of the poet, produce that change, and create that variety. Wisdom and virtue, fimple, uniform, and unchanging, only superior artists can draw, and superior spectators enjoy. No 28. SATURDAY, August 13, 1785. Continuation of the Remarks upon THE HE high heroic virtue we fee exemplified in Tragedy, warms the imagination and fwells the mind; but being distant from the ordinary feelings and exertions of life, has, I fufpect, but little influence upon the conduct. On the contrary, it may be fairly doubted, whether this play of the fancy, in the walks of virtue and benevolence, does not leffen the exertion of those qualities in practice and reality. "Indocilis pri"vata loqui," faid Lucan, of Cæfar: So in some measure, he who is deeply converfant in the tragic phrafe, in the fwelling language of compaffion, of generofity, and of love, finding no parallel in his common intercourse with mankind, will not fo readily open his heart to the calls on his feeling, which the vulgar diftreffes of his fellow-creatures, or the ordinary relations of life, may occafion. In ftage misfortunes, in fancied fufferings, the drapery of the figure hides its form; and real distress, coming in a homely and unornamented ftate, difgufts the eye which had Real had poured its tears over the hero of tragic mifery, or the martyr of romantic woe. calamity offends with its coarseness, and therefore is not produced on the 'fcene, which exhibits in its ftead the fantastic griefs of a delicate and high-wrought fenfibility. Lillo, in his Fatal Difcovery, presented extreme poverty as the diftrefs of the fcene; and the moral of his piece was to inculcate, that poverty was not to be fhunned, nor wealth purfued, at the expence of honesty and virtue. A modern audience did not relifh a diftrefs fo real, but their tears to gave the widow of St. Valori, who was mad for the loss of a husband killed twenty years before. From the fame caufe, the Gamefter, one of the best and moft moral of our latter tragedies, though fucceffively reprefented by the greatest players, has never become popular. And even now the part of Mrs. Beverly (the first character of the first actress in the world) is performed to indifferent houses. The tragic poet is ftriving to diftress his hero that he may move his audience: it is not his bufinefs to equalize the affliction to the evil that occafions it; the effect is what he is to exhibit, which he is to clothe in the flowing language of poetry, and the high colouring of imagination; and if the cause be not very disproportionate indeed, the reader, or the fpectator, will not find fault |