understand each other. You seek then, in a Tragedy, which wise men of old held for the highest effort of human genius, the same gratification, which you receieve from a new Novel, the last German Romance, and other dainties of the same kind, which can be enjoyed but once. If you carry these feelings to the Sister Art of Painting, Michael Angelo's Sestine Chapel and the Scripture Gallery of Raphael, can expect no favour from you. You know all about them beforehand; and are, doubtless, more familiar with the subjects of those Paintings, than with the tragic Tales of the historic or heroic ages. There is a consistency, therefore, in your preference of Contemporary Writers for the great Men of former times, those at least who were deemed great by our Ancestors, sought so little to gratify this kind of curiosity, that they seemed to have regarded the Story in a not much higher light, than the Painter regards his Canvass as that on, not by, which they were to display their appropriate excellence. No work, resembling a Tale or Romance, can well shew less variety of invention in the incidents, or less anxiety in weaving them together, than the Don Quixote of CERVANTES. Its' Admirers feel the disposition to go back and re-peruse some preceeding chapter, at least ten times for once that they find any eagerness to hurry forwards : or open the Book on those parts which they best recollect, even as we visit those friends oftenest whom we love most, and with whose characters and actions we are the most intimately acquainted. In the divine ARIOSTO (as his Countrymen call this, their darling Poet) I question whether there be a single tale of his own invention, or the elements of which were not familiar to the Readers of "old Romance." I will pass by the ancient Greeks, who thought it even necessary to the Fable of a Tragedy, that its' substance should be previously known. That there had been at least fifty Tragedies with the same Title, would be one of the motives which determined Sophocles and Euripedes in the choice of Electra, as a Subject. But Milton

D. Aye Milton, indeed! but do not Dr. Johnson and other great Men tell us, that nobody now reads Milton but as a task?

P. So much the worse for them, of whom this can be truly said! But why then do you pretend to admire. Shakespeare? The greater part, if not all, of his Dramas

were, as far as the names and the main incidents are concerned, already Stock Plays. All the Stories, at least, on which they are built, pre-existed in the Chronicles, BalJads, or Translations of contemporary or preceding English Writers. Why, I repeat, do you pretend to admire Shakespeare? is it, perhaps, that you only pretend to admire him? However, as once for all you have dismissed the well-known Events and Personages of History or the Epic Muse, what have you taken in their stead? Whom has your tragic Muse armed with her bowl and dagger? the sentimental Muse, I should have said, whom you have seated in the throne of Tragedy? What Heroes has she reared on her buskins?

D. O our good Friends and next-door-neighbours, honest Tradesmen, valiant Tars, high-spirited half-pay Officers, philanthropic Jews, virtuous Courtezans, tenderhearted Braziers, and sentimental Rat-catchers! (a little bluff or so, but all our very generous, tender-hearted characters are a little rude or misanthropic, and all our Misanthropes very tender-hearted.)

P. But I pray you, Friend, in what actions great or interesting, can such men be engaged?

D. They give away a great deal of money; find rich Dowries for young men and maidens who have all other good qualities; they brow-beat Lords, Baronets, and Justices of the Peace (for they are as bold as Hector), they rescue Stage Coaches at the instant they are falling down precipices; carry away Infants in the sight of opposing Armies; and some of our Performers act a muscular able-bodied man to such perfection, that our Dramatic Poets, who always have the Actors in their eye, seldom fail to make their favourite Male Character as strong as Sampson and then they take such prodigious leaps!! And what is done on the Stage is more striking even than what is acted. I once remember such a deafening explosion, that I could not hear a word of the Play for half an act after it, and a little real gunpowder being set fire to at the same time, and smelt by all the Spectators, the naturalness of the scene was quite astonishing!

P. But how can you connect with such Men and such Actions, that dependance of thousands on the fate of one, which gives so lofty an interest to the Personages of Shakespeare and the Greek Tragedians? How can you connect with them that sublimest of all feelings, the

power of Destiny and the controlling might of Heaven, which seems to elevate the Characters which sink beneath its' irresistible blow?

D. O mere fancies! We seek and find on the present Stage our own wants and passions, our own vexations, losses, and embarrassments.

P. It is your own poor pettifogging nature then, which you desire to have represented before you? not human nature in its' heighth and vigour? But surely you might find the former with all its' joys and sorrows, more conveniently in your own houses and parishes.

D. True, but here comes a difference. Fortune is blind, but the Poet has his eyes open, and is besides as complaisant as Fortune is capricious. He makes every thing turn out exactly as we would wish it. He gratifies us by representing those as hateful or contemptible whom we hate and wish to despise.

P. (aside) That is, he gratifies your Envy by libelling your superiors.

D. He makes all those precise Moralists, who affect to be better than their Neighbours, turn out at last abject Hypocrites, Traitors, and hard-hearted Villains; and your Men of Spirit, who take their Girl and their Glass with equal freedom, prove the true Men of Honour, and (that no part of the Audience may remain unsatisfied) reform in the last scene, and leave no doubt on the minds of the Ladies, that they will make most faithful and excellent Husbands; though it does seem a pity, that they should be obliged to get rid of qualities which had made them so interesting! Besides, the Poor become rich all at once; and in the final matrimonial choice the opulent and highborn themselves confess, that VIRTUE IS THE ONLY TRUE NOBILITY, AND THAT A LOVELY WOMAN IS A DOWRY OF HERSELF!!

P. Excellent! But you have forgotten those brilliant flashes of Loyalty, those patriotic praises of the King and old England, which, especially if conveyed in a Metaphor from the Ship or the Shop, so often solicit and so unfailingly receive the public plaudit! I give your prudence credit for the omission. For the whole System of your Drama is a moral and intellectual Jacobinism of the most dangerous kind, and those common-place rants of Loyalty are no better than hypocrisy in your Play-wrights, and your own sympathy with them a gross self-delusion. For

the whole secret of dramatic popularity with you, consists in the confusion and subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and effects, in the excitement of surprize, by representing the qualities of liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things rather, which pass among you for such) in persons and in classes of life where experience teaches us least to expect them; and by rewarding with all the sympathies that are the dues of virtue, those criminals whom Law, Reason, and Religion, have excommunicated from our esteem!

And now good Night! Truly! I might have written this last sheet without having gone to Germany, but I fancied myself talking to you by your own fire-side, and can you think it a small pleasure to me to forget now and then, that I am not there. Besides, you and my other good Friends have made up your minds to me as I am, and from whatever place I write you will expect that part of my Travels" will consist of the excursions in my own mind.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Subscribers, who have not remitted their payment by other means, are respectfully requested, after the 20th Number, to order the money to be paid to Mr. George, Ward, Bookseller, Skinner Street, Snow Hill. The Author takes the liberty of suggesting to his Readers, not resident in London, that it would be of very great advantage to him, especially under the heavy expences and many losses of an infant publication, if they could contrive, in the ordinary course of their Correspondence, to have the money paid by their friends in town, instead of remitting it by the post, which must needs subtract so large a part from the Sum Total of the Subscription.

PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN; AND SOLD BY MESSRS. LONGMAN AND CO. PATERNOSTER ROW; AND CLEMENT, 201, STRAND, LONDON.

THE FRIEND.

No. 17. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1809.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE FRIEND.

Sir, I HOPE you will not ascribe to presumption, the liberty I take in addressing you, on the subject of your Work. I feel deeply interested in the cause you have undertaken to support; and my object in writing this letter is to describe to you, in part from my own feelings, what I conceive to be the state of many minds, which may derive important advantage from your in

structions.

I speak, Sir, of those who, though bred up under our unfavourable System of Education, have yet held at times some intercourse with Nature, and with those great minds whose works have been moulded by the Spirit of Nature: who, therefore, when they pass from the Seclusion and Constraint of early Study, bring with them into the new scene of the world, much of the pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is greatly good in thought and action. To such the season of that entrance into the world is a season of fearful importance; not for the seduction of it's passions, but of it's opinions. Whatever be their intellectual powers, unless extraordinary circumstances in their lives have been so favourable to the growth of meditative genius, that their speculative opinions must spring out of their early feelings, their Minds are still at the mercy of fortune: they have no inward impulse steadily to propel them: and must trust to the chances of the world for a guide. And such is our present moral and intellectual State, that these chances are little else than variety of danger. There will be a thousand causes conspiring to complete the work of a false Education, and by enclosing the mind on every side from the influences of natural feeling, to degrade its inborn dig