The two extremes of life,

The highest happiness, and deepest woe,
With all the sharp and bitter aggravations
Of such a vast transition.

A further concurrence may be added, which is, that each piece begins and proceeds in a train of events, which with perfect probability lead to its conclusion, without the help of machines, deities, prodigies, spectres, or any thing else incomprehensible or incredible.K

We may say, too, in both pieces there exists totality; that is to say, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end.'

We mention this again, though we have mentioned it already, because we think we cannot enough enforce so absolutely essential a requisite; a requisite descending in poetry from the mighty epopee down to the minute epigram; and never to be dispensed with, but in sessions-papers, controversial pamphlets, and those passing productions, which, like certain insects of which we read, live and die within the day."

And now having given, in the above instances, this description of the tragic fable, we may be enabled to perceive its amazing efficacy. It does not, like a fine sentiment, or a beautiful simile, give an occasional or local grace; it is never out of sight; it adorns every part, and passes through the whole.

It was from these reasonings that the great father of criticism, speaking of the tragic fable, calls it the very soul of tragedy." Nor is this assertion less true of the comic fable, which has, too, like the tragic, its revolutions and its discoveries; its praise from natural order, and from a just totality.

The difference between them only lies in the persons and the catastrophe, inasmuch as (contrary to the usual practice of tragedy) the comic persons are mostly either of middle or lower life, and the catastrophe for the greater part from bad to good, or (to talk less in extremes) from turbid to tranquil.°

On fables, comic as well as tragic, we may alike remark, that, when good, like many other fine things, they are difficult. And hence perhaps the cause, why in this respect so many dramas are defective; and why their story or fable is commonly no more than either a jumble of events hard to comprehend, or a tale taken from some wretched novel, which has little foundation either in nature or probability.

Even in the plays we most admire, we shall seldom find our admiration to arise from the fable: it is either from the sentiment, as in Measure for Measure; or from the purity of the

It is true, that in one play mention is made of an oracle; in the other, of a dream; but neither of them affects the catastrophe; which in both plays arises from incidents perfectly natural.

1 See chap. v.

m Vid. Aristot. Animal. Histor. 1. v. p. 143. edit. Sylb.

n See before, p. 427.

See p. 429, 430.

diction, as in Cato; or from the characters and manners, as in Lear, Othello, Falstaff, Benedict and Beatrice, Ben the Sailor, sir Peter and lady Teazle, with the other persons of that pleasing drama, the School for Scandal.

To these merits, which are great, we may add others far inferior, such as the scenery; such as, in tragedy, the spectacle of pomps and processions; in comedy, the amusing bustle of surprises and squabbles; all of which have their effect, and keep our attention alive.

But here, alas! commences the grievance. After sentiment, diction, characters, and manners; after the elegance of scenes; after pomps and processions, squabbles and surprises; when, these being over, the whole draws to a conclusion, it is then unfortunately comes the failure. At that critical moment, of all the most interesting, (by that critical moment, I mean the catastrophe,) it is then the poor spectator is led into a labyrinth, where both himself and the poet are often lost together.

In tragedy, this knot, like the Gordian knot, is frequently solved by the sword. The principal parties are slain; and, these being despatched, the play ends of course.

In comedy, the expedient is little better. The old gentleman of the drama, after having fretted and stormed through the first four acts, towards the conclusion of the fifth is unaccountably appeased. At the same time, the dissipated coquette and the dissolute fine gentleman, whose vices cannot be occasional, but must clearly be habitual, are in the space of half a scene miraculously reformed, and grow at once as completely good as if they had never been otherwise.

It was from a sense of this concluding jumble, this unnatural huddling of events, that a witty friend of mine, who was himself a dramatic writer, used pleasantly, though perhaps rather freely, to damn the man who invented fifth acts."

And so much for the nature or character of the dramatic fable.

We are now to inquire concerning manners and sentiment; and first for the theory of manners.

P So said the celebrated Henry Fielding, who was a respectable person both by education and birth, having been bred at Eton school and Leyden, and being lineally descended from an earl of Denbigh.

His Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones may be called master-pieces in the comic epopee, which none since have equalled, though multitudes have imitated; and which he was peculiarly qualified to write in the manner he did, both from his life, his learning, and his genius.

Had his life been less irregular, (for irregular it was, and spent in a promiscuous intercourse with persons of all ranks,) his pictures of human kind had neither been so various nor so natural.

Had he possessed less of literature, he could not have infused such a spirit of classical elegance.

Had his genius been less fertile in wit and humour, he could not have maintained that uninterrupted pleasantry, which never suffers his reader to feel fatigue.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCERNING DRAMATIC MANNERS WHAT CONSTITUTES THEM-MANNERS OF OTHELLO, MACBETH, HAMLET THOSE OF THE LAST QUESTIONED, AND WHY CONSISTENCY REQUIRED YET SOMETIMES BLAMEABLE, AND WHY-GENUINE MANNERS IN SHAKSPEARE—IN LILLO MANNERS, MORALLY BAD, POETICALLY GOOD.

"WHEN the principal persons of any drama preserve such a consistency of conduct, (it matters not whether that conduct be virtuous or vicious,) that, after they have appeared for a scene or two, we conjecture what they will do hereafter from what they have done already, such persons in poetry may be said to have manners, for by this, and this only, are poetic manners constituted."

To explain this assertion by recurring to instances: As soon as we have seen the violent love and weak credulity of Othello, the fatal jealousy, in which they terminate, is no more than what we may conjecture. When we have marked the attention paid by Macbeth to the witches, to the persuasions of his wife, and to the flattering dictates of his own ambition, we suspect something atrocious; nor are we surprised that, in the event, he murders Duncan, and then Banquo. Had he changed his conduct, and been only wicked by halves, his manners would not have been as they now are, poetically good.

If the leading person in a drama, for example Hamlet, appear to have been treated most injuriously, we naturally infer that he will meditate revenge; and should that revenge prove fatal to those who had injured him, it is no more than was probable, when we consider the provocation.

But should the same Hamlet by chance kill an innocent old man-an old man from whom he had never received offence, and with whose daughter he was actually in love-what should we expect then? Should we not look for compassion, I might add, even for compunction? Should we not be shocked, if, in

4 Εστι δὲ ἦθος μὲν τὸ τοιούτον, ὃ δηλοῖ τὴν προαίρεσιν ὁποῖα τις ἐστὶν, ἐν οἷς οὐκ ἐστι δῆλον, εἰ προαιρεῖται, ἢ φεύγει ὁ Aéywv: "Manners or character is that which discovers what the determination [of a speaker] will be, in matters where it is not yet manifest, whether he chooses to do a thing, or to avoid it." Aristot. Poet. c. 6. p. 231. edit. Sylb.

It was from our being unable, in the persons of some dramas, to conjecture what they will determine, that the above author immediately adds, diótep oỷk ëxovow 100s

ἔνιοι τῶν λόγων: “for which reason some of the dramatic dialogues have no manners at all.”

And this well explains another account of manners given in the same book: Tà δὲ ἤθη, καθ ̓ ἃ ποιούς τινας εἶναι φάμεν Toùs párтovTas: "manners are those qualities through which we say, the actors are men of such or such a character." Ibid.

Bossu, in his Traité du Poeme Epique, has given a fine and copious commentary on this part of Aristotle's Poetics. See his work, 1. iv. c. 4, 5, &c.

stead of this, he were to prove quite insensible, or (what is even worse) were he to be brutally jocose?

Here the manners are blameable, because they are inconsistent; we should never conjecture from Hamlet any thing so unfeelingly cruel.

Nor are manners only to be blamed for being thus inconsistent. Consistency itself is blameable, if it exhibit human beings completely abandoned; completely void of virtue; prepared, like king Richard, at their very birth, for mischief. It was of such models that a jocose critic once said, they might make good devils, but they could never make good men not (says he) that they want consistency, but it is of a supernatural sort, which human nature never knew.

Quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.

Hor.

Those who wish to see manners in a more genuine form, may go to the characters already alleged in the preceding chapter;' where, from our previous acquaintance with the several parties, we can hardly fail, as incidents arise, to conjecture their future behaviour."

We may find also manners of this sort in the Fatal Curiosity. Old Wilmot and his wife discover affection for one another; nor is it confined here-they discover it for their absent son; for his beloved Charlotte; and for their faithful servant Randal. Yet, at the same time, from the memory of past affluence, the pressure of present indigence, the fatal want of resources, and the cold ingratitude of friends, they shew to all others (the few above excepted) a gloomy, proud, unfeeling misanthropy.

In this state of mind, and with these manners, an opportunity offers, by murdering an unknown stranger, to gain them immense treasure, and place them above want. As the measure was at once both tempting and easy, was it not natural that such a wife should persuade, and that such a husband should be persuaded? We may conjecture from their past behaviour what part they would prefer, and that part, though morally wicked, is yet poetically good; because here, all we require is a suitable

consistence.*

We are far from justifying assassins. Yet assassins, if truly drawn, are not monsters, but human beings; and as such, being chequered with good and with evil, may by their good move our pity, though their evil cause abhorrence.

But this in the present case is not all. The innocent parties, made miserable, exhibit a distress which comes home; a distress which, as mortals, it is impossible we should not feel.

See p. 433.

⚫ See p. 434.

t See above.

Sunt lacrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt."

Virg. Æn.

quotations from different parts of this af fecting tragedy, what is asserted in various parts of these Inquiries. But the intention

" It was intended to illustrate, by large was laid aside, (at least in greater part,) by

CHAPTER IX.

CONCERNING DRAMATIC SENTIMENT-WHAT CONSTITUTES IT-CONNECTED WITH MANNERS, AND HOW CONCERNING SENTIMENT, GNOMOLOGIC, OR PRECEPTIVE-ITS DESCRIPTION—SOMETIMES HAS A REASON ANNEXED TO IT SOMETIMES LAUDABLE, SOMETIMES BLAMEABLE WHOM IT MOST BECOMES TO UTTER IT, AND WHY — BOSSU— TRANSITION TO DICTION.

FROM manners we pass to sentiment; a word which, though sometimes confined to mere gnomology, or moral precept, was often used by the Greeks in a more comprehensive meaning, including every thing for which men employ language; for proving and solving; for raising and calming the passions; for exaggerating and depreciating; for commands, monitions, prayers, narratives, interrogations, answers, &c. &c. In short, sentiment, in this sense, means little less than the universal subjects of our discourse.*

It was under this meaning the word was originally applied to the drama, and this appears not only from authority, but from fact for what can conduce more effectually than discourse to establish with precision dramatic manners and characters? To refer to a play already mentioned, the Fatal Curiosity:

refecting that the tragedy was easily to be procured, being modern, and having passed through several editions, one particularly so late as in the year 1775, when it was printed with Lillo's other dramatic pieces.

If any one read this tragedy, the author of these Inquiries has a request or two to make, for which he hopes a candid reader will forgive him: one is, not to cavil at minute inaccuracies, but look to the superior merit of the whole taken together; another is, totally to expunge those wretched rhymes which conclude many of the scenes; and which it is probable are not from Lillo, but from some other hand, willing to conform to an absurd fashion, then practised, but now laid aside, the fashion (I mean) of a rhyming conclusion.

* There are two species of sentiment successively here described, both called in English either a sentiment or a sentence, and in Latin sententia. The Greeks were more exact, and to the different species assigned different names, calling the one διάνοια, the other γνώμη.

Of yvwun we shall speak hereafter: of Savoia their descriptions are as follows: Ἔστι δὲ κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν ταῦτα, ὅσα ὑπὸ

τοῦ λόγου δεῖ παρασκευασθῆναι μέρη δὲ τούτων, τό, τε ἀποδεικνῦναι, καὶ τὸ λύειν, καὶ τὸ πάθη παρασκευάζειν, οἷον ἔλεον, ἢ φόβον, ἢ ὀργὴν, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, καὶ ἔτι μέγεθος καὶ σμικρότητα: “ All those things belong to sentiment (or diάvoia) that are to be performed through the help of discourse: now the various branches of these things are to prove, and to solve, to excite passions, (such as pity, fear, anger, and the like,) and, besides this, to magnify, and to diminish." Arist. Poet. c. 19. p. 245. edit. Sylb.

We have here chosen the fullest description of διάνοια; but in the same work there are others more concise, which yet express the same meaning. In the sixth chapter we are told it is, τὸ λέγειν δύνασθαι τὰ ἐνόντα καὶ τὰ ἁρμόττοντα, “ to be able to say (that is, to express justly) such things as necessarily belong to a subject, or properly suit it." And again, soon after: Atávola δὲ, ἐν οἷς ἀποδεικνύουσι τι, ὡς ἔστιν, ἢ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν, ἢ καθόλου τι ἀποφαίνονται : "Atávola, or sentiment, exists, where men demonstrate any thing either to be, or not to be; or through which they assert any thing general, or universal.” Ibid. P. 231.