the bulk and rigidity of the former, (the bones excepted) and breaking down and dividing the texture of the fluids:-the fe rum of the blood is now muddy, the cruor without tenacity, and the whole mafs in a state of diffolution. Hence the fymptoms of a true plethora, and the neceffity of fome speedy evacuation ;-that nature generally determines this evacuation to be by the mouth; at other times by the inteftines; and but rarely by the skin or kidneys ;-that the venereal poison is fufed and refolved in this common diffolution; and expelled the body in the subsequent evacuation;-that the perfect cure depends upon an exact proportion in thefe three things: a fufficient quantity of the medicine, a total diffolution of the poison, and its total evacuation:-and that the leaft deficiency in any of these points will neceffarily render the cure incompleat.-Such are our Author's chief obfervations; how near they approach to mathematical certainties, belongs not to us to determine. There are fome however, we apprehend, who are extenfive practitioners, accurate obfervers, and good reafoners, who must be charged with infidelity;-who will even affert that mercury is a Specific; an antidote to this particular poison; that it destroys its nature; renders it inactive; and that continued and encreased evacuations are not neceffary to wash it out of the body as ftill noxious. They will afk too, if diffolution be the peculiar operation of this mineral, whence the buffy, denfe state of the blood, which fometimes appears after a long continued use of mercury?-whence the more than ufually vifcid faliva, which is evacuated in a falivation? Has Mr. Wathen explained the peculiar operation of mercury;-whence is it that the volatile falts, or other powerful folvents, are not equally efficacious antivenereals?Whence is it, that one ounce of mercury used in the form of ointment; two drachms of the fame administered in the form of pills; and only one drachm of the mercurius dulcis, do all produce the fame mercurial symptoms?-Some will doubt whether all the preparations of mercury can with propriety be faid to be effentially the fame. The kelp or foffile alkali, as united with the marine acid, makes our common alimentary falt: and whence the neceffity of concluding that mercury, when combined with the fame acid, fhould retain its own individual nature? We fhall just mention Mr. Wathen's practice.When the disease is recent and local, half an ounce of the mercureal ointment is to be rubbed every morning on or as near the part affected as poffible; four or five ftools are to be procured every day, which is an evacuation proportioned to the quantity of fluids diffolved by such a dose of mercury; and this courfe is to be continued for a month or more.-There are practitioners who will call this a fomewhat Herculean method. In the worft" and and moft malignant degrees of the lues, where there are exoftofes, caries, &c. a confiderable quantity of mercury, a total change, a perfect refolution, and a plentiful evacuation by a regular ptyalyfm, are neceffary to perfect the cure.In the lefs malignant degrees of the univerfal lues, where the difeafe is not fo firmly rooted in the folid parts, Mr. Wathen judiciously obferves, that it may be cured without a falivation;-he gives the mercury in fuch dofes as lightly to affect the mouth, and keeps it acting in this proportion, by the well-timed interpofition of opening medicines. The letter addreffed to Mr. Collinfon contains the cafe of a child which had fwallowed an ear of dog's grafs. This accident occafioned violent reaching, coughing, and a kind of ftrangulation; after this a pain in the ftomach, fever, lofs of appetite, ftinking breath, and at times the expectoration of matter: all which fymptoms difappeared in about fourteen days. A tumor then began to form upon the back; this fuppurated, and on opening it there was found a spike of the hardeum fpurium of Parkinson. Many cafes fimilar to this are related by practical writers; in most of which, however, the progreffive motion of the extraneous body was not affifted by the circumstances here enumerated. D.. The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes, with the Corrections and Illuftrations of various Commentators. To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnfon. 8vo. 21. 8s. bound. Tonfon, &c. Concluded, from Page 301. IT T is prefumed the diftinction we endeavoured to eftablish, in our former article, refpecting the effects of dramatic reprefentation, is too obviously supported by facts, to be called in queftion by even the moft fcrupulous reader. It is not a little furprifing, therefore, to find the critics implicitly adopting each other's fentiments in this particular, and fucceffively maintaining the neceffity of our being fo far deceived as to believe the diftrefs of a tragedian to be real, before we can poffibly be affected by it. Thus the ingenious Abbé Batteux, in treating of this fubject, obferves, that if the place of the dramatic action be changed, or the time of it prolonged, the fpectator must neceffarily perceive there is fome artifice ufed; after the difcovery of which deccit, he can no longer be brought to believe any thing that paffes, and confequently nothing in the reprefentation will be capable of affecting him.' It is notorious, however, as hath already been obferved, that the fpectator is affected, and yet be lieves nothing at all of the actual diftrefs of the scene, or as our Editor calls it, the materiality of the fable. It is, alfo, no lefs certain, that the intereft we take in the representation of the drama, doth by no means depend on thofe retrospective refinements of intellect, to which Dr. Johnson imputes it. We are moved by fympathy, and to this end the appearance, the imitation, of diftrefs, even though we are confcious, on reflection, that it is no more than imitation, is yet fufficient: Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus a lfunt Humani vultus. And hence the poet proceeds to lay down that rule, which, hath been as frequently mifapplied as his incredulus odi already quoted: a view of the whole paffage, however, will fufficiently explain it, as it did the former: -Si vis me flere, dolendum eft Primum ipfe tibi; tunc tua me infortunia lædent Aut dormitabo, aut ridebo. We see here that it is the mere appearance, the imitation, of paffion only, which is infifted on as neceffary and fufficient to affect the audience. Indeed, if this were not the cafe, the critics must have even gone fo far as to confine unity of character to identity of perfon. And this they might have done alfo, with almoft as much propriety, as they pretend that a fpectator actually fuppofes himfelf to be where the fcene of the drama is laid. For it is furely as difficult for him to conceive himself actually at Elfinore, while he is fitting in Drury-lane theatre, as it is for him to imagine Mr. Garrick, whofe face he knows very well, and who talks plain English, fhould be really Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Dr. Johnfon, therefore, may fully prove the impoffibility of the drama's being in its materiality credited, and yet by no means exculpate Shakespeare in the breach of the dramatic unities. It does not appear to us that either Ariftotle or Horace, from whom we seem to derive the neceffity of obferving the unities of time and place,' had any such notion, as the moderns entertain, ofthe neceffity of making the drama credible;' at least in fuch a manner as Dacier, Boffu, Rapin, Le Blanc, and Dr. Johnson would have us believe. The defective manner in which. the plays of the ancients were reprefented, rendered indeed fuch an attempt to impofe on the audience ftill more impracticable than we even find it at prefent, with all the advantage of moving fcenes, and perspective paintings. Nothing feems clearer than that Horace, in particular, knew how far the delufion could be carried, in its greatest de Agreeable to this the poet fays, FALSIS terroribus implet. gree gree of perfection; and that the paffions only were to be immediately affected by dramatic reprefentation. Now, it is not neceffary, in moving the paffions, that the affecting object or circumftance fhould have, in that particular inftance, the sanction of the reafon or understanding. It is fufficient that the common train of reflections which may be immediately excited by fuch object or circumftance, and which, being ftored up in the memory, are directly fuggefted without particular ratiocination, do not offer any thing repugnant to that fympathy, which operates on the fenfes. Thus the fictitious diftrefs of a miferable object in the street, may have the fame effect on our paffions as one. that is real, although very different paffions might be affected by the different objects, when the understanding had diftinguished between them. And hence, without making any abfurd and unnatural distinction between paffion and intellect, we fee how far fentiment, which is a mixture of both, is engaged as the fole judge and arbiter of dramatic reprefentations. But, as fentiment is not fo blind as mere appetite or paffion, so it is not, on the other hand, fo difcerning as reafon, or intellect. It were abfurd, indeed, to go to the theatre as to an academy. We go there only to fee, veluti in fpeculum, the exterior appearance of the world; not to study that philofophy which teacheth us what it really is. And hence the understanding enters into a compact, as it were, to keep holiday, while the paffions are amufing themselves within the ordinary bounds of fentiment, or what is ufually called common fenfe. Even these bounds, however, are not to be broken. It is taken for granted, that the drama is materialiter a fiction. But, notwithstanding this, it is neceffary that what is reprefented, fhould, as Ariftotle fays, be either what might have happened, or what ought to have happened; that is, the drama muft proceed agreeable to probability or neceffity. It is here to be obferved, however, that as the objects of the drama are not immediately addressed to the understanding, fo the understanding is not immediately to judge of this probability or neceffity. Nor does it; for we frequently fee a philofopher affected as much as a clown, at a scene, which the one would know on reflection to be absolutely impoffible, while the other, let him reflect as long as he pleased, would at last think it very probable. A philofopher, on the other hand, knows a thousand things to be probable, which a common man thinks to be utterly impoffible. And yet, in the common concerns of life, they reafon and act nearly alike; and in the playhouse, where the business of ratiocination is laid afide, it is poffible for them to be equally affected with the reprefentations of the drama, The reafon is, that the philofopher, although he may know on reflection that what is reprefented is morally, or even phyfically, impoffible; yet, knowing, at the fame time, that fuch fuch is not the general opinion of the world, in conformity to which he is in a manner obliged to live, think and act, he judges of probabilities according to the common standard, and gives his paffions their full play amidst a thousand abfurdities and improprieties: for why fhould he expect that truth and propriety upon the ftage which he does not meet with in life? Thus we find that the conduct of the drama, admitting its representation to be, as it really is, only a reprefentation, requires only that degree of probability which is confiftent with the common fenfe, or common mode of thinking of the times, in which it is reprefented. And hence we fee that the fame characters and actions, which in one age or country might feem natural and probable, might in another appear unnatural, improbable and marvellous. At the fame time, it is evident there must be some general rules, arifing from the conftitution of human nature, and the progreffive developement of things, which must be applicable to all ages and nations. So that the reprefentation of what happened in a diftant age or country, though marvellous, if reprefented of the time and place of representation, is included within the bounds of dramatic probability. This is a circumftance alfo, to which the audience ought ever to pay a proper attention; as without it we do not fee how any other probability than that common to their own age and nation could go down with them; unless they were in a difpofition to accept the marvellous inftead of the pathetic. It is obferved by the French academy, in their strictures on the Cid of Corneille, that it is effential to the probable, whether it be of the ordinary or extraordinary kind, that when it is presented to the audience, either the immediate impression it makes on the mind, or their reflections on its parts and confiftency, fhould excite them to believe what is reprefented to have been tre, as they find nothing in such representation repugnant to that belief. Le vraisemblable, tant le commun que l'extraordinaire, doit avoir cela de particulier, que foit par le premiere notion de l'efprit, foit par reflexion fur toutes les parties dont il refulte, lorfque le poëte l'expofe aux auditeurs et aux fpectateurs, ils fe portent à croire, fans autre preuve, qu'il ne contient que de vrai, pour ce qu'ils ne voient rien qui y repugne.' Here we fee the probable is defined to be, that which is generally conceived poffible, and carries with it an apparent proof of fuch poffibility. We come now to confider, how far the obfervation of the dramatic unities may be neceffary to fupport the apparent proofs of this poffibility; and how far Shakespeare hath broken through them. To begin, as ufual, with that of action. The unity of action is fufficiently obferved when a fingle end is propofed, to which all the means made ufe of, in REV. NOV. 1765. Сс the |