TO

SIR JOHN EYLES, BART.

Member of Parliament for, and Alderman of, the City of London, and Sub-Governor of the SouthSea Company.

SIR,

IF tragic poetry be, as Mr. Dryden has somewhere said, the most excellent and most useful kind of writing; the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind.

I hope, I shall not be thought to insinuate, that this, to which I have presumed to prefix your name, is such that depends on its fitnefs to answer the end of tragedy, the exciting of the pafsions, in order to the correcting such of them as are criminal, either in their nature, or through their excefs. Whether the following scenes do this in any tolerable degree, is, with the deference that becomes one who would not be thought vain, submitted to your candour and impartial judgment.

What I would infer is this, I think, evident truth; that tragedy is so far from losing its dignity by being accommodated to the circumstances of the generality of mankind, that it is more truly august, in proportion to the extent of its influence, and the numbers that are properly affected by it: as it is more truly great to be the instrument of good to many who stand in need of our afsistance, than to a very small part of that number.

If princes, &c. were alone liable to misfortunes arising from vice or weaknefs in themselves or

others, there would be good reason for confining the characters in tragedy to those of superior rank; but since the contrary is evident, nothing can be more reasonable than to proportion the remedy to the disease.

I am far from denying, that tragedies founded on any instructive and extraordinary events in history, or well-invented fables, where the persons introduced are of the highest rank, are without their use, even to the bulk of the audience. The strong contrast between a Tamerlane and a Bajazet may have its weight with an unsteady people, and contribute to the fixing of them in the interest of a prince of the character of the former; when through their own levity, or the arts of designing men, they are rendered factions and uneasy, though they have the highest reason to be satisfied. The sentiments and example of a Cato may inspire the spectators with a just sense of the value of liberty, when they see that honest patriot prefer death to an obligation from a tyrant, who would sacrifice the constitution of his country, and the liberties of mankind, to his ambition or revenge. I have attempted, indeed, to enlarge the province of the graver kind of poetry, and should be glad to see it carried on by some abler hand. Plays founded on moral tales in private life may be of admirable use, by carrying conviction to the mind with such irresistible force as to engage all the faculties and power of the soul in the cause of virtue, by stifling vice in its first principles. They who imagine this to be too much to be attributed to tragedy, must be strangers to the energy of that noble species of poetry. Shakspeare, who has given such amazing proofs of his genius, in that as well as in comedy, in his Hamlet has the following lines :

Had he the motive and the cause for pafsion
That I have, he would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the gen'ral ear with horrid speech:
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ign'rant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears.

1

And farther, in the same speech:

I've heard that guilty creatures at a play
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been so struck to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions.

Prodigious! yet strictly just. But I shall not take up your valuable time with my remarks: only give me leave just to observe, that he seems so firmly persuaded of the power of a well-written piece to produce the effect here ascribed to it, as to make Hamlet venture bis soul on the event, and rather trust that, than a messenger from the other world, though it afsumed, as he exprefses it, his noble Father's form, and assured him, that it was his spirit. I'll have, says Hamlet, grounds more relative;

-the play's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Such plays are the best answers to them who deny the lawfulness of the stage.

Considering the novelty of this attempt, I thought it would be expected from me to say something in its excuse; and I was unwilling to lose the opportu nity of saying something of the usefulness of tragedy in general, and what may be reasonably expected from the farther improvement of this excellent kind of poetry.

SIR,

Had

I hope you will not think I have said too much of an art, a mean specimen of which I am ambitious enough to recommend to your favour and protection. A mind, conscious of superior worth, as much despises flattery, as it is above it. I found in myself an inclination to so contemptible a vice, I should not have chosen Sir JOHN EYLES for my patron. And indeed the best written pane. gyric though strictly true, must place you in a light much inferior to that in which you have long been