breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be falfe. It is falfe, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or for a fingle moment was ever credited.

The objection arifing from the impoffibility of pafling the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, fuppofes, that when the play opens, the fpectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Anthony and Cleopatra, Surely he that imagines this, may imagine more. He that can take the flage at one time for the palace of the Prolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Altium. Delusion, if delufion be admitted, has no certain limltation; if the fpectator can be once perfuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Cajar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharjalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a ftate of elevation above the reach of reafon, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may defipife the circumfcriptions of terreftrial nature. There is no reafon why a mind, thus wandering in ecftafy, fhould count the clock, or why an hour fhould not be a century in that calenture of the brain that can make a stage a field.

The truth is, that the spectators are always in their fenfes, and know, from the first act to the laft, that the ftage is only a ftage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain num

ber of lines recited with juft gef ture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to fome action, and an action must be in fome place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in many places very remote from each other; and where is the abfurdity of allowing that fpace to reprefent firft Athens and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre.

By fuppofition, as place is introduced, time may be extended: the time required by the fable elapfes for the most part between the acts; for, of fo much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the fame. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are reprefented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without abfurdity, be reprefented in the cataftrophe, as hap; ening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparations for war; we know that we are neither in Rome ROF Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits fucceffive imitations of fucceffive actions; and why may not the fecond imitations reprefent an action that happened. years after the first, if it be fo connected with it, that nothing but time can be fuppofed to interyene? Time is, of all modes of exiftence, mott obfequious to the imagination; a lapfe of years is as easily conceived as a patlage of hours. In contemplation we eatily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only fee their imitation

It will be atked, how the drama

moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a juft picture of a real original; as reprefenting to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or fuffer what is there feigned to be fuffered or to be done. The reflection that ftrikes the heart, is not that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be expofed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the poffibility than fuppofe the prefence of mifery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when he remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our confcioufnefs of fiction. If we thought murders and treasons real, they would pleafe

po more.

Imitations produce pain or pleafure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not fuppofed capable to give us fhade, or the fountains coolness; but we confider, how much we thould be pleased with fuch fountains playing befide us, and fuch woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the hiftory of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of gincourt. A dramatic exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increate or diminith its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always jefs. The humour of Petruchio

may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the foliloquy of Cato?

:

A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident, that the action is not fupposed to be real and it follows, that between the acts a longer or fhorter time may be allowed to pafs, and that no more account of fpace or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pafs in an hour the life of an hero, or the revolutions of an empire.

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by defign, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impoffible to decide, and ufelefs to inquire. We may reasonably fup pofe, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of scholars and critics, and that he at last deliberately perfifted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is effential to the fable but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arife evidently from falfe affumptions, and, by circumferibing the extent of the drama, leffen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not obferved: nor, if fuch another poet could arife, thould I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act palled at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules, merely pofitive, become the comprehenfive genius of Shakespeare, and fuch cenfures are fuitable to the minute and flender criticism of Voltaire:

Non

Non ufque adeo permifcuit imis Longus fumma dies, ut non, fi voce Metelli

Serventur leges, malint a Cæfare tolli. Yet when I fpeak thus flightly of dramatic rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before fuch authorities I am afraid to

ftand; not that I think the prefent question one of thofe that are to be decided by mere authority, but becaufe it is to be fufpected that these precepts have not been fo eafily received but for better reafons than I have yet been able to find. The refult of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boaft of impartiality, is, that the ⚫unities of time and place are not effential to a juft drama; that though they may fometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be facrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and inftruction; and that a play written with nice obfervation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiofity, as the product of fuperfluous and oftentatious art, by which is fhewn, rather what is poffible, than what is neceffary.

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, fhall preferve all the unities unbroken, deferves the like applaufe with the architect, who fhall difplay all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its ftrength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature and inftru&t life.

Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately writ ten, may recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almoft frighted at my own

temerity; and when I estimate the fame, and the ftrength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to fink down in reverential filence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he faw Neptune thaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers.

Those whom my arguments cannot perfuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakefpeare, will eafily, if they confider the condition of his life, make fome allowance for his ignorance.

The impropriety into which Chriftian

poets have been led by following Homer and Virgil, in their excurfions to the heavenly manfions, confidered both in a poetical and in a moral fenfe; from a Letter concerning epic poems taken from scripture biftery.

HOSE lofty paffages in

TH

Homer and Virgil justly raise our admiration, where Jupiter commiffions the inferior deities to convey his orders to the fons of men. But when Milton and Geffner reprefent the True God of heaven and earth, as delivering his commands to the attendant angels, though our affections are warmed with the fublimity of the fentiments, our reafon is difgufted at the fight of a glaring impropriety. For the heathen writers have given to the boldest of their narrations an air of probability, which is neceffarily wanting in the chriftian. The mufe is fuppofed to dictate what the poet writes. As the is a goddess, and of courfe admitted to the celestial councils, there is nothing inprobable in his relating, upon fuch authority, what paffes there. But

the

the different plan, on which our modern authors have conftructed their poems, does not allow of the fame latitude. They were in fact obliged, how unwilling foever they might be, to renounce the affiftance of that beavenly guide, who had conducted their ancient mafters to the affemblies of the gods. The chriftian theology contradicts the fuppofition of the chriftian poet's infpiration: it does not even permit us to look upon him as better inftructed in the arcana of heaven than ourselves. For as chrifiians we all aflent to the fame truths; as chriftians we are all equally concerned in the fame important events. The words are Geffner's, and the confequence I would draw from them is juft the reverfe of his inftead of facred hiftory being the moft proper fubject for the exercife of genius, it is, in reality, the moft improper; but let it be remem bered, that this affertion is con fined entirely to epic poetry, and that only upon a fuppofition, that machinery is effential to it.

Mr. Addifon fomewhere obferves, that an epic poem ought to be credible in its principal parts. This obfervation fhould not be limited to the incidents only; it extends likewife to the poet's information about them. For though the facts confidered in themselves may not be void of probability, yet if they are fo with respect to the writer's knowledge of them, if he takes upon

him to inftru&t us in what there is no poffible means of his knowing; if the light of hiftory and tradition fails, and that of infpiration is excluded, the whole narrative, as far as it is involved in this total darkness, is in reality incredible+: and one may in fuch a cafe apply to the epic, what Horace does in another to the dramatic poet,

Quodcunque oftendas mihi fic, incredulus odi.

The invocation of the mufe was not therefore in the immortal works of antiquity, as it often is in the tranfient productions of modern genius, a mere matter of ceremony, and a thing of course; nor was it defigned only, like the legiflator's pretended conference with fome celeftial power, to ftamp upon them a divine authority; but it was indifpenfably requifite to give many of the principal parts that degree of probability, which is one effential ingredient in every fpecies of writing.

Accordingly, if we look into Homer and Virgil, we find them fupplicating the mufe's favour, and relying on her inspiration.