contribute in this respect to rectify and enlarge the sentiments of the philosopher:" And, if so, they would have the additional merit of conducting us to the temple of truth, by an easier and more agreeable path than that of mere metaphyfics. We often confound the writer who imitates the paffions with him who only describes them. Shakespeare imitates, Corneille describes. Poets of the second class, no less than those of the first, may invent the most elegant fictions, may paint the most beautiful imagery, may exhibit fituations exceedingly interesting, and conduct their incidents with propriety: Their verfification may be harmonious; and, above all, their characters may be judicioufly composed, partaking of no incongruous qualities, and free from the difcord of jarring principles. But the end of dra matic poetry not only requires that the characters be judicioufly moulded and aptly circumstanced, but that every paffion be naturally expressed. There is certainly a wide difference between the description of the fallies, the repulses, and impatience of a violent affection, whether they are described by the agent or the spectator, and their actual imitation and expression. But perfect imitation can never be effectuated, unless the poet in some measure becomes the person he represents, clothes himself with his character, assumes his manners, and transposeth himself into his fituation: The texture of his mind must be exquifitely fine and delicate; susceptible of every feeling, and easily moved by every impreffion. Together with this delicacy of affection, he must possess a peculiar warmth and facility of imagination, by which he may retire from himself, become insensible of his actual condition, and regardless of external circumstances, feel the very incidents he invents: Like the the votaries of a pagan religion, he must worship idols, the works of his own hands, and tremble before the daemons of his own creation. Nothing affords a stronger evidence of the active, versatile nature of the foul, and of the amazing rapidity of its motions, than these seemingly inconceivable and inconfiftent exertions. cir Shakespeare, inventing the characters of Hamlet, Macbeth, or Othello, actually felt the paffions, and contending emotions ascribed to them, Compare a foliloquy of Hamlet, with one of the descriptions of Roderigue in the Cid. Nothing can be more natural in the circumstances and with the temper of Hamlet, than the following reflections. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and refolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-flaughter! O God! O God! How weary, ftale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie Fie on't! O fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden, By what it fed on: and yet, within a month- In the Cid, Rodirigue, who is the hero of the tragedy, and deeply enamoured of Chimene, Chimene, is called upon to revenge a heinous infult done to his father by the father of his mistress; and he delineates the distress of his fituation, in the following manner; certainly with great beauty of expression and verfification, and with peculiar elegance of description, but not as a real fufferer. Percé jusqu' au fond du coeur D'une atteinte imprevue aussi bien que mortelle; This harangue would better fuit a descriptive novelift or narrator of the story, than the perfon actually concerned. Let us make the experiment. Let us change the verbs and pronouns from the first perfon into the third; and, instead of fuppofing that Rodirigue speaks, let us imagine that the state of his mind is defcribed by a fpec 4 |