men, their manners and their prejudices; and possess, in a certain degree, a knowledge of the politics of his country.

The fundamental bases of Tragedy are affliction, and death, which are always softened and divested of their usual terrors by religion.-We will now proceed to examine, how far the trage-dies of the Greeks were influenced by their notion of religion, and what degree of power it possessed over the minds of men.

The religion of the Greeks was in itself highly theatrical: we are told, that the "Eumenides," a tragedy of schylus, produced one time so wondrous an impression, that pregnant women could not endure the spectacle: but it was the terrific view of the infernal regions, and the power of superstition, more than the splendour of the drama, that caused these violent emotions.

The poet, in exciting the different passions of the human mind, disposed of its faith in religious matters at the same time. If this tragedy, which made so deep an impression on the minds of the Greeks, had been represented in another country, and in the presence of an audience of a different persuasion, the effects would have been totally changed. We shall have occasion to observe, in examining the state of literature in the northern

countries, what kind of emotions were produced by a religion of a different description: and I shall endeavour to explain, in treating of modern literature, that the Christian religion is in itself too awful and mysterious to be introduced with propriety upon the stage. Our dramatic writers can only hope to excite an interest, and move the passions, by an energetic representation of them. But I shall at present confine myself to a farther description of the Greeks, endeavouring to elucidate what impressions the sight of sufferings and death made upon their minds, and in what manner they considered the illicit wanderings of the pas

sions.

The religion of the Greeks attributed to their pretended gods a supreme power of inflicting remorse on the guilty: and their theatres represented the torments of criminals in so horrid a manner, as to fill the minds of the spectators with an insuperable terror: by means also of this sensation, the legislators were enabled to exercise a greater degree of power, and the principles of morality were more firmly binding among men.

The image of death presented a much less gloomy aspect to the ancients than to the moderns: their belief in paganism calmed their fears, by representing a future state in the most brilliant and

pleasing colours. The ancients materialized it by their recitals, their descriptions, and their paintings; and the abyss which nature has placed between our existence and inmortality, was as it were filled up by their mythology.

The Greeks were much less susceptible of calamity than any other nation of antiquity; their political institutions, and national spirit, disposed their minds more to pleasure and contentment; and examples of suicide were much less frequent with them than with the Romans; but the fortitude which enabled them to support misfortune, is chiefly to be attributed to their superstition. Their oracles, their dreams, their presentiments, and every circumstance which throws into the scale of human events the extraordinary and the unforeseen, did not suffer them to credit that any irrevocable calamity could happen. Thus was despair kept at a distance by hope, which, even in the most perilous situations, suggested, that some miracle might still be exerted in their favour. The calculation of moral probabilities might frequently have destroyed the delusion: but when the mind once imbibes supernatural ideas, the impossible appears to have no existence. The Greeks never felt, and could not therefore have explained, that dejection and depression of spirits

so mournfully expressed in the writings of Shakspeare.

The great men of antiquity were exposed to severe trials; but they were never forgotten or overlooked by their country: great misfortunes astonished them, and they imputed their origin to supernatural causes, and the immediate displeasure of their gods. The religion of the Greeks is, to us, nothing more than poetry; for it is impossible that their tragedies can ever inspire us with the same emotions they themselves experienced in hearing them recited. The Greek authors grounded their success on a number of tragical events which coincided with the dark credulity of the age in which they were written; and thus supplied by religious terrors their want of more natural emotions.

Almost every circumstance with the Greeks had novelty to recommend it; even the passion of grief (if the term may be admitted) was in its infancy. The expression of hope and ardent expectation was always certain of exciting a tender compassion; and the assurance that the audience would take the most lively interest in every species of distress, gave a confidence to the poet he did not apprehend (what ought and would be feared in these more enlightened days,

even in fiction), that he should fatigue his hearers by his plaintive tale; as if misfortune, represented on the tablets of the imagination, were still in the presence of egotism,

The distress of the Greeks wore an august appearance; it furnished the painter with noble attitudes, and the poets with images which commanded respect; it also gave to religion a new' and more solemn appearance: yet with all these advantages, the sentiments inspired by the modern tragedies are more profound and lasting. The representations of later times do not simply offer a picture of majestic distress, but distress, solitary, and without support,-distress such as nature and society have made it.

The Greeks did not, like us, require a continual change of situation and contrast of characters; the effect of their tragedies was not brightened by the opposition of shades; their dramatic art resembled their paintings, where the most vivid colours and the most various objects were placed upon the same plan, without any observance of perspective. The greater part of the Grecian tragedies being founded on the action and will of the gods, an exact appearance of truth, the gradation of natural events, was dispensed with, and the greatest effect was produced