De cette paffion la fenfible peinture

Eft pour aller au cœur la route la plus fûre. Peignez donc, j'y confens, les heros amoureux, Mais ne m'en formez pas des bergers doucereux. Qu'Achille aime autrement que Thyrfis & Philene. N'allez pas d'un Cyrus nous faire un Artamene: Et que l'amour, fouvent de remors combattu, Paroiffe une foibleffe, & non une vertu *.

Shakespear has painted this paffion with great propriety, in fome other tragedies; but the picture in Romeo and Juliet is much fuperior to any of the reft: And yet Romeo's fudden paffion for Juliet, after having been fo deeply in love with Rofaline, is certainly a great defect, and accordingly Mr. Garrick has left out the first paffion in the piece, as he has altered it. In Antony and Cleopatra, love is alfo drawn with propriety. Mr. Rowe, in his Fair Penitent, has given us a very

Oeuvres de Boileau, Amft. edit. tom. i. p. 191. affecting

affecting tragedy founded entirely on a love-plot, and that paffion appears in its proper colours. And in his Royal Convert, the love of Aribert and Ethelinda is extremely moving. Dr. Young has fucceeded very nobly in painting this paffion; that of Alonzo, in the Revenge, is highly interefting; but Carlos's giving up Leonora, is rather unnatural; yet the inward conflicts of his mind are well drawn, and very affecting. This author, in the Brothers, has alfo given us a very natural picture of love; that of Demetrius is attended with fome of the most pathetic ftrokes that ever were wrote.

Mr. Whitehead, in the firft part of his Roman Father, has given us a natural picture of love in Horatia's paffion for Curiatius; but at last, when her brother Publius not only kills her lover, but reproaches

reproaches her with her paffion, the forgets her love, fully forgives him (though he had also ftabbed herself), and preaches forth the fentiments rather of an old flinty fenator, than a tender loving maid. Love is too powerful a paffion; it poffeffes the foul too fully to permit fuch a mixture of oppofing fentiments. The fable of this tragedy might, with feveral material alterations, be rendered a very good one'; but at prefent it is one of the worst I know. Inftead of our terror and compaffion, it raifes nothing but our horror and deteftation: The action of Pubdius's murdering his fifter Horatia, is infinitely too fhocking for the ftage; and yet the pity for her fate, which might have attended her, is all loft in a jumble of contradictions during the whole fifth act. The fenfations raised by that catastrophe, are all divided and ruined by the stuff

tuff that follows, which can fcarcely be reckoned a part of the action. There is fomething amazingly unnatural and improbable in Horatia's scheme of provoking her brother to kill her: She dies almoft unlamented by the audience. And as to the brutal father and favage fon, instead of any pity attending them, we cannot but leave the theatre with a regret upon our minds at Publius's escaping the punishment his ferocious villany deferves. It is in vain to affert the amazing patriotic fpirit of the Romans; I anfwer, a poet fhould chufe fuch fubjects as are proper for tragedy: This Sto cal patriotism, which degenerates into barbarity, will never move our pity on the ftage. I do not know a tragedy, at which our compaffion is fo little moved: When first we hear that the Curiatii are opposed to the Horatii, we then indeed pity Horatia's melancholy

melancholy fituation; but all fuch fentiments are utterly loft in the fifth act, which, in my humble opinion, is for wretchedly compofed (I mean the fable) as to counteract every fentiment a tragedy ought to leave on the minds of an audience. The language of the piece is, in general, chaste and manly, and fome of the fentiments very noble; but in point of fable and characters, few tragedies are fo faulty.

TH

SECT. IV.

HE tragedy of the Brothers is one of the best that has appeared on our ftage for many years. I believe I fhall not be thought extravagant in my praise of it, in faying that both it and the Revenge are far more interefting, pathetic, and affecting; in fhort, that they are Vol. III. much

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