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found more convenient for the display of characters, it grew into a rule that the story should be always new. This disadvantage, on the side of the comic poet is taken notice of in those verses of Antiphanes, or rather, as Casaubon conjectures, of Aristophanes, in a play of his intitled, Ποίησις. - The reason of this difference now appears.

Μακάριόν έσιν ἡ τραγῳδία

Ποίημα κατὰ παντ'. εἴγε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοις καὶ
Υπὸ τῶν θεατῶν εἰσὶν ἐγνωρισμένοι,
Πρὶν καί τιν' εἰπεῖν, ὡς ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον
Δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οιδίπεν γάρ ἄν γε φῶ,
Τὰ δ ̓ ἄλλα πάντ ̓ ἴσασιν. Ὁ πατὴρ Λάϊος,
Μήτηρ Ιοκάση, θυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες
Τί πείσεθ ̓ ὅτος, τί πεποίηκεν...
Ἡμῖν δὲ ταῦτ ̓ ἐκ ἔςιν· ἀλλὰ πάντα δεῖ
Εὑρεῖν ὀνόματα καινὰ, τὰ διωκημένα
Πρότερον, τὰ νῦν παρόντα, τὴν καταςροφήν,
Τὴν ἐσβολήν. ἂν ἕν τι τέτων παραλίπη,
Χρέμης τις, ἢ Φείδων τις ἐκσυρίττεται,
Πηλεῖ δὲ ταῦτ ̓ ἔξεςι καὶ Τεύκρῳ ποιεῖν.

One sees, then, the reason why Tragedy prefers real subjects, and even old ones; and, on the contrary, why comedy delights in feigned subjects, and new.

The same genius in the two dramas is observable, in their draught of characters. Comedy makes all its Characters general; Tragedy, particular. The Avare of Moliere is not so properly the picture of a covetous man, as of covetousness itself. Racine's Nero, on the other hand, is not a picture of cruelty, but of a cruel man.

Yet here it will be proper to guard against two mistakes, which the principles now delivered may be thought to countenance.

The first is with regard to tragic characters, which I say are particular. My meaning is, they are more particular than those of comedy. That is, the end of tragedy does not require or permit the poet to draw together so many of those characteristic circumstances which shewthe manners, as Comedy. For, in the former of these dramas, no more of character is shewn, than what the course of the action necessarily calls forth. Whereas, all or most of the features, by which it is usually distinguished, are sought out and industriously displayed in the latter.

The case is much the same as in portrait painting; where, if a great master be required

to draw a particular face, he gives the very lineaments he finds in it; yet so far resembling to what he observes of the same turn in other faces, as not to affect any minute circumstance of peculiarity. But if the same artist were to design a head in general, he would assemble together all the customary traits and features, any where observable through the species, which should best express the idea, whatever it was, he had conceived in his own mind and wanted to exhibit in the picture.

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There is much the same difference between the two sorts of dramatic portraits. Whence appears that in calling the tragic character particular, I suppose it only less representative of the kind than the comic; not that the draught of so much character as it is concerned to represent should not be general: the contrary of which I have asserted and explained at large elsewhere [Notes on the A. P. v. 317.]

Next, I have said, the characters of just comedy are general. And this I explain by the instance of the Avare of Moliere, which conforms more to the idea of avarice, than to that of the real avaricious man. But here again, the reader will not understand me, as saying this in the strict sense of the words. I

VOL. II.

even think Moliere faulty in the instance given; though, with some necessary explanation, it may well enough serve to express my meaning.

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The view of the comic scene being to delineate characters, this end, I suppose, will be attained most perfectly, by making those characters as universal as possible. For thus the person shewn in the drama being the representative of all characters of the same kind, furnishes in the highest degree the entertainment of humour. But then this universality must be such as agrees not to our idea of the possible effects of the character as conceived in the abstract, but to the actual exertion of its powers; which experience justifies, and common life allows. Moliere, and before him Plautus, had offended in this; that for a picture of the avaricious man, they presented us with a fantastic unpleasing draught of the passion of avarice. I call this a fantastic draught, because it hath no archetype in na ture. And it is, farther, an unpleasing one, for, being the delineation of a simple passion unmixed, it wanted all those

-Lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife

Gives all the strength and colour of our life.

These lights and shades (as the poet finely calls the intermixture of many passions, which, with the leading or principal one, form the human character) must be blended together in every picture of dramatic manners; because the avowed business of the drama is to image real life. Yet the draught of the leading passion must be as general as this strife in nature permits, in order to express the intended character more perfectly,

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All which again is easily illustrated in the instance of painting. In portraits of character, as we may call those that give a picture of the manners, the artist, if he be of real ability, will not go to work on the possibility of an abstract idea. All he intends, is to shew that some one quality predominates: and this he images strongly, and by such signatures as are most conspicuous in the operation of the leading passion And when he hath done this, we may, in common speech or in conpliment, if we please, to his art, say of such a portrait that it images to us not the man but the passion; just as the ancients observed of the famous statue of Apollodorus by Silarion, that it expressed not the angry Apollodorus, but his passion of angerf. But by this must

f Non hominem ex ære fecit, sed iracundiam. Plin. xxxiv. §.

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