'The language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last. . . Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists; that is, “either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are illsounding or improper; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant."... Let any man, who understands English, read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense. . . . Many of (their plots) were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name Pericles Prince of Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakespeare; besides many of the rest, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour Lost, Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment. . . . I could easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct plotting, nor that which they call the decorum of the stage. . . . The reader will see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself. . . His shepherd falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women.'1 Fletcher nowhere permits kings to retain the royal dignity. Moreover, the action of these authors' plays is always barbarous. They introduce battles on the stage; they transport the scene in a moment to a distance of twenty years or five hundred leagues, and a score of times consecutively in one act; they jumble together three or four different actions, especially in the historical dramas. But they sin most in style. Dryden says of Shakspeare:

'Many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure.' a Ben Jonson himself often has bad plots, redundancies, barbarisms:

'Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it.'3

All, in short, descend to quibbles, low and common expressions:

'In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours. Besides the want of education and learning, they wanted the benefit of conGentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and, though they allow Cob and Tibb to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard, or with their rags.'

verse.

For these gentlemen we must now write, and especially for reasonable men;' for it is not enough to have wit or to love tragedy, in order to be a good critic: we must possess a solid knowledge and a lofty reason, know Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and pronounce judgment according to their rules. These rules, based upon observation and logic, prescribe unity of action; that this action should have a beginning, middle, and end;

1 Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada, iv. 213.

2 Preface to Troilus and Cressida, vi. 239.

3 Defence of the Epilogue of the Conquest of Granada, iv. 219.

• Ibid. 225.

5 Preface to All for Love, v. 306.

that its parts should proceed naturally one from the other; that it should excite terror and pity, so as to inform and improve us; that the characters should be distinct, harmonious, conformable with tradition or the design of the poet. Such, says Dryden, will be the new tragedy, closely allied, it seems, to the French, especially as he quotes Bossu and Rapin, as if he took them for instructors.

Yet it differs from it, and Dryden enumerates all that an English pit can blame in the French stage. He says:

"The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions.... He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except the Liar? and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, . . . the most favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. . . . Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read, . . . their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey; they are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reasons of state; and Polieucte, in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons. . . . I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French; for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious.'' As for the tumults and combats which they relegate behind the scenes, 'nature has so formed our countrymen to fierceness, . . . they will scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from them.' Thus the French, by fettering themselves with these scruples,3

1 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 337.

2 Ibid. 343.

In the preface of All for Love, v. 308, Dryden says: 'In this nicety of manners does the excellency of French poetry consist. Their heroes are the most civil people breathing, but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense; all their wit is in their ceremony; they want the genius which animates our stage. . . . Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to death than accuse his step-mother to his father; and my critics, I am sure, will commend him for it: But we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think, that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. . . . But take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part, to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain. . . . (The poet) has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolite.' This criticism shows in a small compass all the common sense and freedom of thought of Dryden; but, at the same time, all the coarseness of his education and of his age.

...

and confining themselves in their unities and their rules, have removed action from their stage, and brought themselves down to unbearable monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness, variety, fulness.

Contented to be thinly regular. . . .

Their tongue enfeebled is refined too much,
And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch.
Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey,

More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay.'1

Let them laugh as much as they like at Fletcher and Shakspeare; there is in them ‘a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of the French.'

Though exaggerated, this criticism is good; and because it is good, I mistrust the works which the writer is to produce. It is dangerous for an artist to be excellent in theory; the creative spirit is hardly consonant with the criticising spirit: he who, quietly seated on the shore, discusses and compares, is hardly capable of plunging straight and boldly into the stormy sea of invention. Moreover, Dryden holds himself too evenly poised betwixt the moods; original artists love . solely and without justice a certain idea and a certain world; the rest disappears from their eyes; confined in one region of art, they deny or scorn the other; it is because they are limited that they are strong. We see beforehand that Dryden, pushed one way by his English mind, will be drawn another way by his French rules; that he will alternately venture and restrain himself; that he will attain mediocrity, that is, platitude; that by reason of his faults he will fall into incongruities, that is, into absurdities. All original art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated from without: it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it from elsewhere; it constitutes an inviolable whole; it is an animated existence, which lives on its own blood, and which languishes or dies if deprived of some of its blood and supplied from the veins of another. Shakspeare's imagination cannot be guided by Racine's reason, nor Racine's reason be exalted by Shakspeare's imagination; each is good in itself, and excludes its rival; to unite them would be to produce a bastard, a sick child and a monster. Disorder, violent and sudden action, harsh words, horror, depth, truth, exact imitation of reality, and the lawless outbursts of mad passions,—these features of Shakspeare become each other. Order, measure, eloquence, aristocratic refinement, worldly urbanity, exquisite painting of delicacy and virtue, all Racine's features suit each other. It would destroy the one to attenuate, the other to inflame him. Their whole being and beauty consist in the agreement of their parts: to mar this agreement would be to abolish their being and their beauty. In order to produce, we must invent a personal and harmonious conception; we must not

1 Epistle xiv., to Mr. Motteux, xi. 70.

น

mingle two strange and opposite ones. Dryden has left undone what he should have done, and has done what he should not have done. He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivolous, void of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature, expecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the gratification of their curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work of art, only makes sensible a profound idea of man and of existence; there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and violences, and the audience ought to be capable of comprehending it, as the poet is of conceiving it. The hearer must have reflected or felt with energy or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined thoughts; Hamlet and Iphigénie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a lover of money. The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our own tears; our interest is but that of sympathy; and the drama is like an external conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we have felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like Saint Albans, drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old children like Charles II.? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in their sports, obscene in words, void of honour, humanity, politeness, who made the court a house of ill fame! The splendid decorations, change of scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the observance of a few rules imported from Paris,—such was the natural food of their vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English Restoration.

I take one of these tragedies, very celebrated in time past, Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr,—a fine title, and fit to make a stir. The royal martyr is Saint Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it appears, who is brought before the tyrant Maximin. She confesses her faith, and a pagan philosopher Apollonius is set loose against her, to refute her. Maximin says:

'War is my province !-Priest, why stand you mute? You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute.' Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the following words:

... Reason with your fond religion fights,

For many gods are many infinites;

This to the first philosophers was known,

Who, under various names, ador'd but one.' '1

Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician immediately replies:

1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1.

Then let the whole dispute concluded be
Betwixt these rules, and Christianity."

Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the spot, insults the prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly enamoured, and makes jokes:

In this dilemma he sends Placidius, 'a great officer,' to St. Catharine ; the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus; forthwith the saint propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of Maximin comes himself, and says:

atoms.

Since you neglect to answer my desires,
Know, princess, you shall burn in other fires.'3

Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off. Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, and to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs a magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the infernal spirits, and brings up a troop of Spirits: these dance and sing voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catharine. Her guardian-angel comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catharine and her mother. Whilst the executioners are going to strip the saint, a modest angel descends in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel; after which they are carried off, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add to these pretty inventions a twofold intrigue, the love of Maximin's daughter Valeria for Porphyrius, captain of the Prætorian bands, and that of Porphyrius for Berenice, Maximin's wife; then a sudden catastrophe, three deaths, and the triumph of the good people, who get married and interchange polite phrases. Such is this tragedy, which is called French-like; and most of the others are like it. In Secret Love, in Marriage à la Mode, in Aureng-Zebe, in the Indian Emperor, and especially in the Conquest of Granada, everything is extravagant. People cut one another to pieces, take towns, stab each other, shout lustily. These dramas have just the truth and naturalness of the libretto of an opera. Incantations abound; a spirit appears in the Indian Emperor, and declares that the Indian gods ' are driven to exile from their native lands.' Ballets are also there; Vasquez and Pizarro, seated in 'a pleasant grotto,' watch like conquerors the dances of the Indian girls, who gambol voluptuously about them.

1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1.

Ibid.

3 Ibid. 3. 1. This Maximin has a turn for jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he offers his daughter in marriage, says that the distance was so vast;' whereupon Maximin replies: 'Yet heaven and earth, which so remote appear, are by the air, which flows betwixt them, near' (2. 1).