In the Orphan, for example, neither the fall of Caftalio or Polydore fhould excite our feeling; it should be referved for the unhappy father and the injured daughter: whereas the brothers in their diftreffes meet only with the rewards due to their deferts; one being a perfidious, equivocating friend; the other, a wild, intemperate villain.

There is not one character that deferves compaffion in the favourite Tragedy of the Fair Penitent, a title to which the heroine has no manner of right; her grief does not spring from compunction, but from a variety of paf-. fions which she is prevented from gratifying. She uses her husband like a dog, for behaving to her too much like a gentleman; and, like an infamous incendiary, breeds a quarrel between him and an honeft man, who, through an equal attachment to her and honesty, endeavours to bring her back to her duty, and make her lead an eafy life with a fond husband. The last character is indeed fo clouded by the vivacity of Lothario, the spirit of Calista; the grief of Sciolto, and the ftoic gravity of Horatio, that we have scarcely room to take any

notice of him, even when he is on the Stage. In fhort, the characters wherewith we are any way interested in this piece, justly merit their fate; the father for forcing his daughter to marry against her confent; the daughter for being an ill-judging, irreclaimable prostitute; and the gallant for being an abandoned profelyte of vice. Yet these are pictures, which, properly difpofed, might have had a due effect, by creating a neceffary abhorrence of the blemishes that stain them; whereas at prefent we fee the Poet has endeavoured to render Lothario as amiable as poffible, and the fall of him and Calista highly distressful.

;

There is another living Play of Mr. Rowe's; I fay another, because, these two excepted, his Dramatic Pieces breathe only now and then which has very different effects. The reader will perceive, without my naming it, that I mean Jane Shore. That unhappy woman is introduced as a convert to virtue; and while, by her perfifting in the cause of honour, we fee her facrificed to ingratitude and cruelty, we are at liberty to weep her fate; tho' we must acknowledge the juftice of that Being which thus repays her former crimes, at the

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fame

1

fame time that it punishes the perfidious Alicia and the wanton Haftings. In the pitiable end of Dumont, the Poet has been fo happy, as to raise, in every feeling bofom, fenfations of fuch a nature as would incline any one in the same circumstances to join in his beneficence, tho' previously affured that the thunder of tyranny should break in destruction over the head of him who held out relief.

Otway and Rowe, in their Dramatic Exhibitions, fpoke more immediately to the heart than any of their fucceffors. Few of our very modern Tragedies feem difpofed to this end; in compaffing which confifts the greatest art of writing for the Stage, where nothing delights reason but what moves the affections, and interefts the foul. One would imagine that the rhetoric which should warm the paffions were now loft; fince we scarcely fee any thing but ill-contrived plots, cloathed with cold, meagre language; expreffions without majesty; figures void of grace; characters meanly fupported, and catastrophes inartfully wound up. So that were not Shakespeare, Rowe, and Otway, fometimes to step forth with uncontroulable dignity, we fhould be apt to think the

end

end of Tragedy no longer fubfifted in Britain; not all the varieties of the Roman Father could be able to preserve it a footing on the Stage, but for the exquifite feeling of a Garrick, which we once remember to have feen finely fupported by the tenderness of a Cibber, the noble deportment of a Barry; who certainly, though fecondary, appeared in this Play to vast advantage; for to be second to Cæfar, is almost fupreme honour.

There is an Eurydice in being; the language; the characters and plot of which prove, that there is still among us one man capable of restoring Melpomene to her throne, would he shake off his indolence, and stoop from his bowers of happy ease and social joy, to correct the taste of a cold, difpirited age.

CHAP.

CHA P. III.

Of the different species of Tragedy of Lady Macbeth, its propriety: Some ftri&tures on Shakespeare and Otway: of Tate's alteration of King Lear; of Addison's Cato; of our feelings when fpectators of a Tragedy; and their caufe.

W

E have before obferved, that the Tra

gic Poet has but two ways of working his end of reformation, by terror and pity; and his means of creating them also are only twofold, viz. either by public or by private diftreffes. The former of thefe ftand more remote from the common fphere of action, as recapitulating fomething grander, and does not therefore fall immediately under the apprehenfion of the audience in general. This distance adds a dignity to the scene, and poffibly may create a proportionable degree of anxiety and concern in the beholder, because a body of people are fupposed to suffer in the perfon of one illuftrious man on the other hand, the woes of domestic life, or of a private family, open in fome all the springs of tenderness that can actuate the foul, which is

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