begotten by an incubus on a witch; but this, as I have elsewhere provod,' is not wholly beyond the bounds of credibility, at least the vulgar still believe it. We have the separated notions of a spirit, and of a witch; (and spirits, according to Plato, are vested with a subtile body; according to some of his followers, have different sexes ;) therefore, as from the distinct apprehensions of a horse and of a man, imagination has formed a centaur, so from those of an incubus and a sorceress, Shakspeare has produced his monster. Whether or no his generation can be defended, I leave to philosophy; but of this I am certain, that the poet has most judiciously furnished him with a person, a language, and a character, which will suit him, both by father's and mother's side: he has all the discontents and malice of a witch, and of a devil, besides a convenient proportion of the deadly sins; gluttony, sloth, and hust, are manifest: the dejectedness of a slave is likewise given him, and the ignorance of one bred up in a desert island. His person is monstrous, as he is the product of unnatural lust; and his language is as hobgoblin as his person: in all things he is distinguished from other mortals.The characters of Fletcher are poor and narrow, in comparison of Shakspeare's;. I remember not one which is not borrowed from him, unless you will except that strange mixture of a man in THE KING AND NO

* See the Essay on Heroick Plays, p. 216.

KING: So that in this part Shakspeare is generally worth our imitation; and to imitate Fletcher is but to copy after him who was a copier.

Under this general head of manners the passions are naturally included, as belonging to the characters. I speak not of pity and of terrour, which are to be moved in the audience by the plot; but of anger, hatred, love, ambition, jealousy, revenge, &c. as they are shewn in this or that person of the play. To describe these naturally, and to move them artfully, is one of the greatest commendations which can be given to a poet: to write pathetically, says Longinus, cannot proceed but from a lofty genius. A poet must be born with this quality; yet, unless he help himself by an acquired knowledge of the passions, what they are in their own nature, and by what springs they are to be moved, he will be subject either to raise them where they ought not be raised, or not to raise them by the just degrees of nature, or to amplify them beyond the natural bounds, or not to observe the crisis and turns of them in their cooling and decay; all which errours proceed from want of judgment in the poet, and from being unskilled in the principles of moral philosophy. Nothing is more frequent in a fanciful writer, than to foil himself by not managing his strength: therefore, as in a wrestler, there is first required some measure of force, a well-knit body, and active limbs, without which all instruction would be vain, yet, these being granted, if he want the skill which is

necessary to a wrestler, he shall make but small advantage of his natural robustuousness; so, in a poet, his inborn vehemence and force of spirit will only run him out of breath the sooner, if it be not supported by the help of art. The roar of ? passion, indeed, may please an audience, three parts of which are ignorant enough to think all is moving which is noise, and it may stretch the lungs of an ambitious actor, who will die upon the spot for a thundering clap; but it will move no other passion than indignation and contempt from judicious men. Longinus, whom I have hitherto followed, continues thus: if the passions be artfully employed, the discourse becomes vehement and lofty; if otherwise, there is nothing more ridiculous than a great passion out of season. And to this he animadverts severely upon purpose Aschylus, who writ nothing in cold blood, but was always in a rapture, and in fury with his audience; the inspiration was still upon him, he was ever tearing it upon the tripos; or, (to run off as madly as he docs, from one similitude to another,) he was always at high flood of passion, cven in the dead ebb and lowest water-mark of the scene. He who would raise the passion of a judicious audience, says a learned critick, must be sure to take his hearers along with him; if they be in a calm, it is in vain for him to be in a huff: he must move them by degrees, and kindle with them, otherwise he will be in danger of setting his own heap of stubble on a fire, and of burning

out by himself without warming the company that stand about him. They who would justify the madness of poetry from the authority of Aristotle, have mistaken the text, and consequently the interpretation: I imagine it to be false read, where he says of poetry, that it is uus paix, that it had always somewhat in it either of a genius, or of a madman. It is more probable that the original ran thus, that poetry was Que pa that it belongs to a witty man, but not to a madman. Thus then the passions, as they are considered simply and in themselves, suffer violence when they are perpetually maintained at the same height; for what melody can be made on that instrument, all whose strings are screwed up at first to their utmost stretch, and to the same sound? But this is not the worst; for the characters likewise bear a part in the general calamity,

if

you consider the passions as embodied in them: for it follows of necessity, that no man can be distinguished from another by his discourse, when every man is ranting, swaggering, and exclaiming with the same excess, as if it were the only business of all the characters to contend with each other for the prize at Billingsgate, or that the scene of the tragedy lay in Bedlam. Suppose the

*Mr. Tyrwhitt (Aristot. de Poeticâ, p. 184, Oxon. 1794) thinks the original the true reading; and that i here means-rather than. His interpretation is-" poetica ingeniosi est hominis opus magis quam insani (ellipsi scilicet TỪ MAAAON Atticis scriptoribus satis usitata.)"

poet should intend this man to be cholerick, and that man to be patient; yet when they are confounded in the writing, you cannot distinguish them from one another: for the man who was called patient and tame, is only so before he speaks; but let his clack be set a-going, and he shall tongue it as impetuously, and as loudly, as the arrantest hero of the play. By this means the characters are only distinct in name; but in reality all the men and women in the play are the same person. No man should pretend to write, who cannot temper his fancy with his judg ment; nothing is more dangerous to a raw horse man than a hot-mouthed jade without a curb.

It is necessary therefore for a poet, who would concern an audience by describing of a passion, first to prepare it, and not to rush upon it all at once. Ovid has judiciously shewn the difference of these two ways in the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses. Ajax from the very beginning breaks out into his exclamations, and is swearing by his maker;-Agimus, proh Jupiter, inquit. Ulysses, on the contrary, prepares his audience with all the submissiveness he can practise, and all the calmness of a reasonable man; he found his judges in a tranquillity of spirit, and therefore set out leisurely and softly with them, till he had warmed them by degrees, and then he began to mend his pace, and to draw them along with his own impetuousness; yet so managing his breath, that it might not fail him at his need, and reserving his utmost proofs of ability even to the last. The