gedy showed them in a simple manner; virtue and vice were strongly and distinctly marked, wisdom and weakness were easily discriminated; and though vice might be sometimes palliated, and weakness excused, the spectator could always discover the character of each. But in the modern drama there is an uncertain sort of outline, a blended colouring, by which the distinction of these objects is frequently lost. The refinement of modern audiences calls for shades of character more delicate than those which the stage formerly exhibited; the consequence is, that the bounds of right and wrong are often so uncertainly marked as not to be easily distinguished; and if the powers of poetry, or the eloquence of sentiment, should be on the side of the latter, it will require a greater firmness of mind than youth or inexperience is master of to resist it.

Reason condemns every sort of weakness; but passion, enthusiasm, and sickly sensibility, have dignified certain weaknesses with the name of amiable; and the young, of whom some are susceptible, and others affect susceptibility, think it often an honour to be subject to their control. In tragedy, or tragic writing, they often find such 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 such characters, who shift the hue and colour of their minds, according to the change of situation or the variety of incident; or sometimes, whose minds, in the hands of the poet, produce that change, and create that variety. Wisdom and virtue, simple, uniform, and unchanging, only superior artists can draw, and superior spectators enjoy.

N.

No. 28. SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1785.

Continuation of the Remarks upon Tragedy.

THE high heroic virtue we see exemplified in tragedy warms the imagination and swells the mind; but being distant from the ordinary feelings and exertions of life, has, I suspect, 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 lessen the exertion of those qualities in practice and reality. Indocilis privata loqui,' said Lucan, of Cæsar: so in some measure, he who is deeply conversant in the tragic phrase, in the swelling language of compassion, of generosity, and of love, finding no parallel in his common intercourse with mankind, will not so readily open his heart to the calls on his feeling, which the vulgar distresses of his fellow-creatures, or the ordinary relations of life, may occasion. In stage misfortunes, in fancied sufferings, the drapery of the figure hides its form; and real distress, coming in a homely and unornamented state, disgusts the eye which had poured its tears over the hero of tragic misery, or the martyr of romantic woe. Real calamity offends with its coarseness, and therefore is not produced on the scene, which exhibits in its stead the fantastic griefs of a delicate and high-wrought sensibility. Lillo, in his Fatal Discovery, presented extreme poverty as the distress of the scene; and the moral of his piece was to inculcate, that, poverty was not to be shunned, nor

wealth pursued, at the expense of honesty and virtue. A modern audience did not relish a distress so real, but gave their tears to the widow of St. Valori, who was mad for the loss of a husband killed twenty years before. From the same cause, the Gamester, one of the best and most moral of our latter tragedies, though successively represented 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 striving to distress his hero that he may move his audience: it is not his business to equalize the affliction to the evil that occasions 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 spectator, will not find fault with it. Castalio, in the Orphan (a play so grossly immoral, that it were unfair in me to quote it, except as illustrative of this single argument,) is mad with anguish and with rage, because his wife's maid refuses him access to her apartment, according to the previous appointment they had made; and Orosmane, in Zayre, remains immobile, et sa langue glacée,' because his bride begs him to defer their marriage for a day. Yet these were disappointments which the lover of Otway, and much more the hero of Voltaire, might surely have borne with greater fortitude.

If we are to apply all this in example, it seems to have a tendency to weaken our mind to our own sufferings, without opening it to the sufferings of others. The real evils which the dignity of the scene hides from our view are those which we ought to pity in our neighbours; the fantastic and imaginary distresses which it exhibits are those we are apt to indulge in ourselves. Here then tragedy adds to the

VOL. I.

list of our calamities, without increasing the catalogue of our virtues.

6

'Mo

As tragedy thus dignifies the distresses, so it elevates the actions of its personages, their virtues, and their vices. But this removes virtue to a greater distance from us, and brings vice nearer: it exalts the first to a point beyond our imitation, and ennobles the latter to a degree above our abhorrence. Shakspeare, who generally discriminates strongly the good and ill qualities of his characters, has yet exhibited a Macbeth, a tyrant and a murderer, whom we are disposed rather to pity than to hate. dern tragedy,' says a celebrated critic, has become more a school of virtue than the ancient, by being more the theatre of passion: an Othello, hurried by jealousy to murder his innocent wife: a Jaffier, ensnared by resentment and want, to engage in a conspiracy, and then stung with remorse and involved in ruin; a Siffredi, through the deceit which he employs for public-spirited ends, bringing destruction on all whom he loved: these are the examples which tragedy now displays, by means of which it inculcates on men the proper government of their passions.' I am afraid, if we appeal to the feelings of the audience at the conclusion of any of those pieces, we shall not find the effect to be what is here supposed. Othello we rather pity for his jealousy, than hate as a murderer. With Jaffier and his associates we are undoubtedly leagued against the rulers of Venice; and even the faith and tenderness of Belvidera hardly make us forgive her for betraying her secret. The sentiments of Siffredi, however wise and just, are disregarded where they impeach the dignity and supereminence of love. His deceit indeed is blamed, which is said to be the moral of the piece; but it is blamed because it hindered the union of Tancred and Sigismunda, which, from the very beginning of the play, is the object in

which the reader or spectator is interested. Reverse the situation, make it a contrivance to defeat the claim of the tyrant's daughter, to give the throne to Tancred, and to place Sigismunda there at his side, the audience would admire its ingenuity, and rejoice in its success.

In the mixture of a plot, and amidst the variety of situations, where weaknesses are flattered and passions indulged, at the same time that virtues are displayed and duties performed, one set of readers will enjoy the pleasure of the first, while those only who have less need to be instructed will seize the instruction of the latter. When Marcus dies for his country, the ladies in the side-boxes only consider his death as removing the bar to the marriage of Lucia with his brother Portius.

In tragedy as in novel, which is sometimes a kind of tragedy, the author is obliged, in justification of weak characters, to elevate villanous ones, or to throw round their vices a bewitching address and captivating manners. Lovelace is made a character which the greater number of girls admire, in order to justify the seduction of Clarissa. Lothario, though very inferior, is something of the same cast, to mitigate the crime of Calista. The story would not be probable else;granted: but in proportion to the art of the poet in rendering it probable, he heightens the immoral effect of which I complain.

As the incidents must be formed, so must the sentiments be introduced according to the character and condition of the person speaking them, not according to the laws of virtue, or the dictates of prudence. To give them this propriety, they must often be apologies for vice and for fraud, or contain ridicule against virtue and honesty. It is not sufficient to answer, that if the person uttering them is punished in the course, or at the end of the play, the expiation is