sounding sentences, and long similes, exhibiting an active fancy and a cold imagination, supplied at once the place of force and of pathos.

The line between comedy and tragedy was now strictly drawn. The latter was no longer permitted to show that strain of heroic humour which exhibits itself in the character of Falconbridge, Hotspur, and Henry V., as well as Mercutio. All was to be cold and solemn, and in the same key of dull, grave state. Neither was comedy relieved by the touches of pathetic tenderness, and even sublimity, which are to be found in the romantic plays of the earlier period. To compensate the audience for the want of this beautiful variety of passion and feeling, Southerne, as Otway had done before him, usually introduces a few scenes of an under-plot, containing the most wretched and indecent farce, which was so slightly and awkwardly dovetailed into the original tragedy, that they have since been cancelled as impertinent intrusions, without being so much as missed. Young, Thomson, and others, who followed the same wordy and declamatory system of composition, contributed rather to sink than to exalt the character of the stage. The two first were both men of excellent genius, as their other writings have sufficiently testified; but, as dramatists, they wrought upon a false model, and their productions are of little value.

It is a remarkable instance of the decay of dramatic art at this period, that several of the principal authors of the time felt themselves at liberty to write imitations of old plays belonging to the original school, by way of adapting them to the taste

of their own age. well known as a poor imitation of Massinger's Fatal Dowry. It does not greatly excel the original in the management and conduct of the piece; and, in every thing else, falls as far beneath it as the baldest translation can sink below the most spirited original.

The Fair Penitent of Rowe is

It would appear that the players of this period had adopted a mode of acting correspondent to the ́ ́poetical taste of the time. Declamation seems to

have been more in fashion in the school of Booth and Betterton than that vivacity of action which exhibits at once, with word, eye, and gesture, the immediate passion which it is the actor's part to express. "I cannot help," says Cibber, "in regard to truth, remembering the rude and riotous havoc we made of all the late dramatic honours of the theatre! all became at once the spoil of ignorance and self-conceit! Shakspeare was defaced and tortured in every signal character; Hamlet and Othello lost, in one hour, all their good sense, their dignity, and fame; Brutus and Cassius became noisy blusterers, with bold unmeaning eyes, mistaken sentiments, and turgid elocution!”—(Cibber's Memoirs.)

A singular attempt to deviate from the prevailing taste in tragedy was made by Lillo, with the highly laudable purpose of enlarging the sphere of dramatic utility. He conceived that plays founded upon incidents of private life, might carry more immediate conviction to the mind of the hearers, and be the means of stifling more vices in the bud, than those founded on the more remote and grander events of

history. Accordingly, he formed his plots from domestic crimes, and his characters never rose above the ranks of middle life. Lillo had many requisites for a tragedian; he understood, either from innate taste, or critical study, the advantage to be derived from a consistent fable; and, in the tragedy of the Fatal Curiosity, he has left the model of a plot, in which, without the help of any exterior circumstances, a train of events operating upon the characters of the dramatic persons, produce a conclusion at once the most dramatic and the most horrible that the imagination can conceive. Neither does it appear that, as a poet, Lillo was at all inferior to others of his age. He possessed a beautiful fancy; and much of his dialogue is as forcibly expressed as it is well conceived. On some occasions, however, he sinks below his subject; and on others, he appears to be dragged down to the nether sphere in which it is laid, and to become cold and creeping, as if depressed with the consciousness that he was writing upon a mean subject. In George Barnwell his apprenticehero never rises above an idle and profligate lad; Milwood's attractions are not beyond those of a very vulgar woman of the town; Thoroughgood, as his name expresses, is very worthy and very tiresome; and there is, positively, nothing to redeem the piece, excepting the interest arising from a tale of horror, and the supposed usefulness of the moral. The Fatal Curiosity is a play of a very different cast, and such as might have shaken the Grecian stage, even during the reign of terror. But the powers of the poet prove unequal to the concluding horrors of his scene. Old Wilmot's character, as

the needy man who had known better days, exhibits a mind naturally good, but prepared for acting evil, even by the evil which he has himself suffered, and opens in a manner which excites the highest interest and expectation. But Lillo was unable to sustain the character to the close. After discovering himself to be the murderer of his son, the old man falls into the common cant of the theatre; he talks about computing sands, increasing the noise of thunder, adding water to the sea, and fire to Etna, by way of describing the excess of his horror and remorse ; and becomes as dully desperate, or as desperately dull, as any other despairing hero in the last scene of a fifth act.

During this third period of the Drama, Comedy underwent several changes. The department called genteel comedy, where the persons as well as the foibles ridiculed, were derived chiefly from high life, assumed a separate and distinct existence from that which ransacked human nature at large for its subject. Like the tragedy of the period, this particular species of comedy was borrowed from the French. It was pleasing to the higher classes, because it lay within their own immediate circle, and turned upon the topics of gallantry, persiflage, affectation, and raillery. It was agreeable to the general audience, who imagined they were thereby admitted into the presence of their betters, and enjoyed their amusement at their expense. The Careless Husband of Cibber, is, perhaps, the best English play on this model. The general fault to which they are all liable, is their tendency to lower the tone of moral feeling; and to familiarize men, in the mid

dling, with the cold, heartless, and selfish system of profligate gallantry practised among the higher ranks. We are inclined to believe, that in a moral point of view, genteel comedy, as it has been usually written, is more prejudicial to public morals than plays, the tendency of which seems at first more grossly vicious. It is not so probable that the Beggar's Opera has sent any one from the two shilling gallery to the highway, as that a youth entering upon the world, and hesitating between good and evil, may be determined to the worse course, by the gay and seductive example of Lovemore or Sir Charles Easy. At any rate, the tenderness with which vices are shaded off into foibles, familiarizes them to the mind of the hearer, and gives a false colouring to those crimes which should be placed before the mind in their native deformity. But the heaviness of this class of plays, and the difficulty of finding adequate representatives for those characters which are really well drawn, are powerful antidotes to the evil which we complain of. That which is dully written, and awkwardly performed, will not find many imitators.

The genteel comedy, being a plant of foreign growth, never obtained exclusive possession of the English stage, any more than court dresses have been adopted in our private societies. The comedy of intrigue, borrowed, perhaps, originally from the Spaniards, continued to be written and acted with success. Many of Cibber's pieces, of Centlivre's and others, still retain their place on the stage. This is a species of comedy easily written, and seen with pleasure, though consisting chiefly of bustle