horse-play in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say, The zeal of God's house has eaten him up;' but I am sure, it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility."

1

Congreve, less prudent, made an angry and petulant defence, yet tacitly admitted the charge brought against him, by retrenching, in the future editions of his plays, passages of grossness and profaneness, which the restless antiquary still detects in the early copies. And, on the whole, Collier's satire was attended with such salutary effects, that men started at the mass of impudence and filth, which had been gradually accumulated in the theatre, during the last reigns; and if the Augean stable was not sufficiently cleansed, the stream of public opinion was fairly directed against its conglomerated impurities. Since that period, indecency, that easy substitute for wit and pleasantry, has been gradually banished from the Drama, where the conversation is now (according to Sheridan at least) always moral, if not entertaining.

During the second period of the British Drama, great improvement was made in point of art. The principles of dramatic composition were more completely understood, and the poets themselves had written so much upon the subject, that, as Dryden somewhere complains, they had taught their audience the art of criticising their performances. They did not, however, so far surrender the liberties and immunities of their predecessors, as to receive laws from the French critics. The rules

1 [See Dryden's controversy with Collier, ante, vol. i., Life of Dryden, p. 358, &c.]

of the unities were no farther adopted by Otway, Congreve, and the writers of their time, than their immediate purpose admitted. It was allowed, on all hands, that unnecessary and gross irregularities were to be avoided, but no precise rule was adopted; poets argued upon the subject according to caprice, and acted according to convenience. Gross and palpable extensions of time, and frequent changes of place, were avoided; and, unless in tragi-comedies, authors studied to combine the intrigue of their play into one distinct and progressive action. The genius by which this art was supported, was neither so general nor so profuse as that which decorated the preceding period. It was enough, however, to support the honour of the Drama; and if the second period has produced fewer masterpieces of talent, it has exhibited more plays capable of being acted.

III. In the third period of dramatic history, the critics began to obtain an authority for which they \ had long struggled, and which might have proved fatal to the liberties of the stage. It is the great danger of criticism, when laying down abstract rules without reference to any example, that these regulations can only apply to the form, and never to the essence of the Drama. They may assume, that the plot must be formed on a certain model, but they cannot teach the spirit which is to animate its progress. They cannot show how a passion should be painted, but they can tell to a moment when the curtain should be dropped. The misfortune is, that, while treating of these subordinate considerations,

critics exalt them to an undue importance, in their own minds and that of their scholars. What they carve out for their pupils is a mere dissection of a lifeless form; the genius which animated it escapes, as the principle of life glided from the scalpel of those anatomists who sought to detect it in the earlier days of that art. Rymer had, as early as 1688, discovered that our poetry of the last age was as rude as its architecture. "One cause thereof," he continues, "might be, that Aristotle's Treatise of Poetry has been so little studied amongst us; it was, perhaps, commented upon by all the great men in Italy, before we well knew (on this side of the Alps) that there was such a book in being." Accordingly, Rymer endeavours to establish what he calls the Rule of Reason over Fancy, in the contrivance and economy of a play." Those who object to this subjugation," he observes, "are mere fanatics in poetry, and will never be saved by their good works." The species of reason, however, to which Rymer appeals, resembles, in its occult nature, that which lies hidden in the depths of the municipal law, and which is better known to the common class of mankind under the name of Authority. Because Aristotle assigns Pity and Terror as the objects of tragedy, Rymer resumes the proposition, that no other source of passion can be legitimate. To this he adds some arbitrary rules, of which it would be difficult to discover the rationale. It was the opinion, we are told, of the ancients, "that Comedy (whose province was humour and ridiculous matter only) was to represent worse than the truth, History to describe the truth, but Tragedy was to invent things better

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than the truth. Like good painters, they must design their images like the life, but yet better and more beautiful than the life. The malefactor of tragedy must be a better sort of malefactor than those that live in the present age: For an obdurate, impudent, and impenitent malefactor, can neither move compassion nor terror, nor be of any imaginable use in tragedy." It would be difficult to account for these definitions upon any logical principle, and impossible for an admirer of the Drama to assent to a rule which would exclude from the stage Iago and Richard III. It is equally difficult to account for the rationale of the following dogma"If I mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill his master; nor a private man, much less a subject, to kill a king, nor on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other by such persons, whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." (Rymer's View of the Tragedies of the Last Age.) Though for these, and similar critical conceits, it would be difficult to find any just principle, nevertheless, Rymer, Dennis, and other critics, who, mixing observations founded on sound judgment and taste, with others which rested merely upon dauntless assertion, or upon the opinions of Aristotle, began thereby to extend their authority, and produce a more than salutary influence upon the Drama. It is true, that both of the aristarchs whom we have named were so ill advised as themselves to attempt to write plays, and thereby most effectually proved, that it was possible for a Drama

to be extremely regular, and, at the same time, intolerably dull. Gradually, however, their precepts, in despite of their example, gained influence over the stage. They laid down rules in which the audience were taught to regard the trade of a connoisseur as easy and soon learned; and the same quantity of technical jargon which, in the present day, constitutes a judge of painting, was, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, sufficient to elevate a Templar into a dramatic critic. The court of criticism, though self-constituted, was sufficiently formidable, since they possessed the power of executing their own decrees. Many authors made their submission; and, amongst others, Congreve humbled himself in the Mourning Bride, and Addison, with anxious and constitutional timidity, sacrificed to the unities in his celebrated tragedy of Cato. Being in form and essence rather a French than an English play, it is one of the few English tragedies which foreigners have admired. It was translated into Italian, and admired as a perfect model by Riccoboni, although his taste condemns the silly love intrigue. Its success was contagious. Southerne and Rowe may be considered as belonging to the same school; although the former admired Shakspeare, and the latter formed himself, in some degree, on the model of Otway. Translations of French tragedies became every day more frequent; and their diction and style of dialogue was imitated upon the British stage. The language of tragedy no longer expressed human passion, or intimated what the persons of the Drama actually felt, but described and debated, alternately, what they ought to feel; and