emotions, tracing all their different tints, and representing them in a lively manner by natural sentiments properly expressed? The truth is, such execution is too delicate for an ordinary genius; and for that reason, the bulk of writers, instead of expressing a passion as one does who feels it, content themselves with describing it in the language of a spectator. To awaken passion by an internal effort merely, without any external cause, requires great sensibility and yet that operation is necessary, no less to the writer than to the actor; because none but those who actually feel a passion, can represent it to the life. The writer's part is the more complicated he must add composition to passion; and must, in the quickest succession, adopt every different character. But a very humble flight of imagination, may serve to convert a writer into a spectator; so as to figure, in some obscure manner, an action as passing in his sight and hearing. In that figured situation, being led naturally to write like a spectator, he entertains his readers with his own reflections, with cool description, and florid declamation; instead of making them eye-witnesses, as it were, to a real event, and to every movement of genuine passion.* Thus most of our plays appear to be cast in the same mould; personages without character, the mere outlines of passion, a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style.t This descriptive manner of representing passion, is a very cold. entertainment our sympathy is not raised by description; we must first be lulled into a dream of reality, and every thing must appear as passing in our sight. Unhappy is the player of genius who acts a capital part in what may be termed a descriptive tragedy; after assuming the very passion that is be represented, how is he cramped in action, when he must utter, not the sentiments of the passion he feels, but a cold description in the language of a bystander? It is that imperfection, I am persuaded, in the bulk of our plays, which confines our stage almost entirely to Shakspeare, notwithstanding his many irregularities. In our late English tragedies, we sometimes find sentiments tolerably well adapted to a plain passion: but we must not, in any of them, expect a sentiment expressive of character; and, upon that very account, our late performances of the dramatic kind are, for the most part, intolerably insipid. In the Eneid, the hero is made to describe himself in the following words: Sum pius Eneas, fama super æthera notus. Virgil could never have been guilty of an impropriety so gross, had he assumed the personage of his hero, instead of uttering the sentiments of a spectator. Nor would Xenophon have made the following speech for Cyrus the younger, to his Grecian auxiliaries, whom he was leading against his brother Artaxerxes: "I have chosen you, O Greeks! my auxiliaries, not to enlarge my army, for I have Barbarians without number; but because you surpass all the Barbarians in valor and military discipline." This sentiment is Xenophon's: for surely Cyrus did not reckon his countrymen Barbarians. "Chez Racine tout est sentiment; il a su faire parler chacun pour soi, et c'est en cela qu'il est vraiment unique parmi les auteurs dramatiques de sa nation." -Rousseau. See Chap. 2. Part 1. sect. 7. Looking back upon what is said, I am in some apprehension of not being perfectly understood; for it is not easy to avoid obscurity in handling a matter so complicated: but I promise to set it in the clearest light, by adding example to precept. The first examples shall be of sentiments that appear the legitimate offspring of passion; to which shall be opposed what are descriptive only, and illegitimate: and in making this comparison, I borrow my instances from Shakspeare and Corneille, who for genius in dramatic composition stand uppermost in the rolls of fame. Shakspeare shall furnish the first example, being of sentiments dictated by a violent and perturbed passion: Lear. -Filial ingratitude Is it not, as if this mouth should tear this hand Kent. Good, my lord, enter here. Lear. Pr'ythee, go in thyself, seek thine own ease, King Lear, Act III. Sc. 4. I give another example of the same kind, expressing sentiments arising from remorse and despair : Othello. Lo! I have a weapon: A better never did itself sustain Upon a soldier's thigh. I've seen the day, I've made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop. But, oh vain boast! Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now. Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd; Now-how dost thou look now? Oh ill-starr'd wench! Whip me, ye devils, 1 From the possession of this heav'nly sight; Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur, Othello, Act V. Sc. 2. The sentiments here displayed flow so naturally from the passions represented, that we cannot conceive any imitation more perfect. With regard to the French author, truth obliges me to acknowledge, that he describes in the style of a spectator, instead of expressing passion like one who feels it; which naturally betrays him into a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style.* It is scarcely necessary to gives examples, for he never varies from that tone. I shall, however, take two passages at a venture, in order to be confronted with those transcribed above. In the tragedy of Cinna, Emilia, after the conspiracy was discovered, having nothing in view but racks and death to herself and her lover, receives a pardon from Augustus, attended with the brightest circumstances of magnanimity and tenderness. This is a lucky situation for representing the passions of surprise and gratitude in their different stages, which seem naturally to be what follow. These passions, raised at once to the utmost pitch, and being at first too big for utterance, must, for some moments be expressed by violent gestures only: as soon as there is * This criticism reaches the French dramatic writers in general, with very few exceptions: their tragedies, excepting those of Racine, are mostly, if not totally, descriptive. Corneille led the way; and later writers, imitating his manner, have accustomed the French ear to a style, formal, pompous, declamatory, which suits not with any passion. Hence, to burlesque a French tragedy, is not more difficult than to burlesque a stiff solemn fop. The facility of the operation has in Paris introduced a singular amusement, which is, to burlesque the more successful tragedies in a sort of farce, called a parody. La Motte, who himself appears to have been sorely galled by some of these productions, acknowledges that no more is necessary to give them currency but barely to vary the dramatis persona, and instead of kings and heroes, queens and princesses, to substitute tinkers and tailors, milkmaids and seamstresses. The declamatory style, so different from the genuine expression of passion, passes in some measure unobserved, when great personages are the speakers; but in the mouths of the vulgar the impropriety with regard to the speaker as well as to the passion represented, is so remarkable as to become ridiculous. A tragedy, where every passion is made to speak in its natural tone, is not liable to be thus burlesqued: the same passion is by all men expressed nearly in the same manner; and, therefore, the genuine expressions of a passion cannot be ridiculous in the mouth of any man who is susceptible of the passion. It is a well known fact, that to an English ear, the French actors appear to pronounce with too great rapidity; a complaint much insisted on by Cibber in particular, who had frequently heard the famous Baron upon the French stage. This may in some measure be attributed to our want of facility in the French tongue; as foreigners generally imagine that every language is pronounced too quick by natives. But that it is not the sole cause, will be probable from a fact directly opposite, that the French are not a little disgusted with the languidness, as they term it, of the English pronunciation. May not this difference of taste be derived from what is observed above? The pronunciation of the genuine language of a passion is necessarily directed by the nature of the passion, particu farly by the slowness or celerity of its progress: plaintive passions, which are the most frequent in tragedy, having a slow motion, dictate a slow pronunciation; in declamation, on the contrary, the speaker warms gradually; and, as he warms, he naturally accelerates his pronunciation. But, as the French have formed their tone of pronunciation upon Corneille's declamatory tragedies, and the English upon the more natural language of Shakspeare, it is not surprising that custom should produce such difference of taste in the two nations. vent for words, the first expressions are broken and interrupted: at last we ought to expect a tide of intermingled sentiments, occasioned' by the fluctuation of the mind between the two passions. Æmilia is made to behave in a very different manner: with extreme coolness she describes her own situation, as if she were merely a spectator, or rather the poet takes the task off her hands: Et je me rens, Seigneur, à ces hautes bontés: Je sens naitre en mon ame un repentir puissant, Et pour preuve, Seigneur, je n'en veux que moi-même. Puisqu'il change mon cœur, qu'il veut changer l'état, Act V. Sc. 3. In the tragedy of Sertorius, the queen, surprised with the news. that her lover was assassinated, instead of venting any passion, degenerates into a cool spectator, and undertakes to instruct the bystanders how a queen ought to behave on such an occasion: Viriate. Il m'en fait voir ensemble, et l'auteur, et la cause. Par cet assassinat c'est de moi qu'on dispose, C'est mon trône, c'est moi qu'on pretend conquerir; So much in general upon the genuine sentiments of passion. I proceed to particular observations. And, first, passions seldom continu uniform any considerable time: they generally fluctuate, swelling and subsiding by turns, often in a quick succession;* and the sen ments cannot be just unless they correspond to such fluctuation. Accordingly, climax never shows better than in expressing a swelling passion: the following passages may suffice for an illustration. The wildness of the waves and rocks to this? That thus relenting they have giv'n thee back Mourning Bride, Act I. Sc. 7. * See Chap. 2. Part 3. I would not be the villain that thou think'st Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3. The following passage expresses finely the progress of conviction. Mourning Bride, Act II. Sc. 6. In the progress of thought, our resolutions become more vigorous as well as our passions: If ever I do yield or give consent, By any action, word, or thought, to wed Another lord; may then just heav'n show'r down, &c. Mourning Bride, Act I. Sc. 1. And this leads to a second observation, that the different stages of a passion, and its different directions, from birth to extinction, must be carefully represented in their order; because otherwise the sentiments, by being misplaced, will appear forced and unnatural. Resentment, for example, when provoked by an atrocious injury, discharges itself first upon the author: sentiments therefore of revenge come always first, and must, in some measure, be exhausted before the person injured thinks of grieving for himself. In the Cid of Corneille, Don Diegue having been affronted in a cruel manner, expresses scarcely any sentiment of revenge, but is totally occupied in contemplating the low situation to which he is reduced by the affront: O rage! ô desespoir! ô vieillesse ennemie ! N'ai je donc tant vecu que pour cette infamie? Le Cid, Act I. Sc. 7. These sentiments are certainly not the first that are suggested by the passion of resentment. As the first movements of resentment |