people excites your envy, you should consider that it has not been forced: if I am placed "high on a gilded chair," and my situation is loftier than my actual merits entitle me to, you should remember that I have been called to it by the public voice, from whose decision there is no appeal.

Trag. True; too true: capricious, infatuated public ! "O, thou fond many!" thinkest thou that I have forgotten the "loud applause" with which thou wert wont to receive me? The poet has truly said

An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

Mim. You should ever bear in mind, that, in the world of letters, republican rules can alone be admitted; that the place of honour must ever belong to merit,-which, by the way, I do not assume to myself.

Trag. Admitted: both Comicus and myself, then, may surely lay claim to places of honour, on the score of merit; for to any other claim, a very Zany can scarcely pretend.

Mim. Your merits I readily acknowledge, whatever you may deny to me; for, as I before took occasion to observe, I look up to you as my superior natures. With respect to myself, I have been led into some vaunting expressions by reason of the contemptuous language with which you have been pleased to greet me, but which I shall never be provoked to return.-Your merit, I acknowledge, is manifest-for you have severally excelled in your art, but that of your followers I have yet to find.

Trag. Strange that you should thus plead against yourself: not a follower of Thalia, too, and an humble imitator of her enchanting art?

Mim. I follow not the higher comedy, and, therefore, cannot properly be called an imitator in Thalia's art : the business of the queen of smiles is not only to amuse, but to instruct; while mine, with a due attention to les bienséances, is merely to awaken mirth; sometimes,

I must own, by dint of absurdities,-at other times by the force of humour, and, it may be, by wit.

Com. You speak with ingenuousness and candour: but, if you so frequently please by absurdities, the pretender to comedy is equally happy; for such, according to the modern nomenclature, is the designation of certain performances intended to rival mine.

Trag. Nay, that the authors are comical you will scarcely deny this, their pantomime tricks, by the help of closets, screens, and trap-doors, together with the grimace and contortion of visage required of their actors, will sufficiently prove.-Risum teneatis ?-But the object proposed by the writer is obtained, and that, we may conclude, is enough.

Com. Extravagance of manner may occasionally provoke to laughter as much as either genuine humour or wit; but that is rather the merit of the player than of the poet. I have known the house in a roar at the assumed awkwardness of two of the characters of a play, who, on quitting the stage, have jostled each other with such seeming violence as to be in danger of meeting with the same disaster as that of Mr. Bayes, who, you may remember, in showing his antics, unfortunately fell and broke his nose. But many will, no doubt, tell you, with that gentleman, "these are the little things that set you off a play;" and, we must admit, that his original device of improving a scene by means of a "petticoat and a colic," is comparatively trifling with what has since been introduced on the stage.

Trag. This degeneracy among your pupils, joined to the vitiated taste of the age, must afflict you greatly; and I no longer wonder at the air of melancholy which so frequently overshadows your brow.

Mim. The genius of comedy will, no doubt, droop under unmerited and repeated slights; but the powers of genius will again be felt and acknowledged: the "ecstasies of mirth," and the "luxuries of grief," can never wholly pass away.

ย

Com. The "joy of grief” I can readily conceive; and the true disciple of Melpomene must know it. "Laughter, holding both his sides," is now very rarely to be seen in the genuine productions of my school: for true humour, I must observe to you, is ever without vulgar grimace, while it excites in its auditors merriment. That, therefore, which is excessive, belongs, I repeat, to an inferior province of the drama; not that I would, at any time, affect the serious manners, or the studied sententiousness, of a Fontenelle, a Diderot, or a La Chaussée; but still it is my particular desire to maintain a suitable dignity in the sight of the world; and, while I am contributing to the pleasures of the public, I would not forget that it is the business of the dramatist

To set before 'em

A grace, a manner, a decorum.

Trag. This, indeed, is the real character and the distinguishing excellence of comedy, but of which the common laughers in our theatres appear not to have the smallest idea. Low humour, and which, as you have well observed, should be peculiar to farce, was the great failing of the otherwise judicious Jonson: this, too, was the vice of Molière, the first comic poet among the French; he, however, will always be admired; but had the judgment and manners of Cæcilius, Afranius,* or Terence, been united with his humorous talent, what an inimitable writer would he have been!

Mim. True: but these opposite perfections are very rarely to be found in one and the same writer. The ancients, whom you instance, on account of urbanity of manners, were wholly deficient in humour;-the true vis comica was utterly unknown to them all; even Aristophanes is more of a satirist than a comic poet. Smart and delicate raillery, too, has been entirely reserved for (comparatively speaking) modern times: I speak not altogether of the present day.

This is advanced of these two writers on the authority of Cicero and Quinctilian,

Com. This true vis comica, this fine and delicate raillery, however, is not to be considered as a positive excellence or defect in either class. In earlier ages, the greater uniformity of the human character must necessarily occasion a kind of monotony in writers for the stage the absence of humour, therefore, in their productions is not to be considered as a defect; neither, as I have before observed, is the frequent recurrence of it, in our modern poets, to be held as real excellence,luxury and refinement have principally produced it; these have long been in a progressive state, and may now be said to have attained to their utmost height. But sterling humour is now seldom to be found, it has lost its brilliancy, its naturalness--if I may apply such a phrase to the creations of Shakspeare.

Trag. The current of genius is not, however, wholly dry spectacles, pantomimes, and all these raree-shows of folly, are but the weeds that for a time impede its course: another age may remove these obstacles, and the stream again flow on, in its own deep melody, rippling and murmuring as of old. They who have so long sipped of the sluggish waters of the marsh, will then slake their thirst in the "well of English undefiled."

DIALOGUE XX.

SCENE THE ELYSIAN FIELDS.

MERCHANT and SOLDIER.

Merch. So, then, you are at length returned unhurt. from the dreadful field of Mars: let me congratulate you on your escape; let me rejoice with you on leaving the earth, with all its tumults, battle, bloodshed, and ambition.

Sold. You hold entirely the language of the peacemaker, and seem to have forgotten that I had no other employment but war.

Merch. And a terrible employment it is: "Bella! horrida bella!" exclaims the poet; but it is not the peaceful man alone who shrinks from the horrors of war, the sensation is common even to the soldier.

Sold. I always thought that glory was his great pursuit,—the prize for which he so earnestly contended.

Merch. You understand not the military character aright; the most distinguished commanders of ancient times (the moderns, by the way, are absolute children in the science of arms), the greatest captains, have actually "wept at sight of a battalia," when they have viewed an army drawn up and ready for the fight.

many

Sold. How, say you, the moderns absolute children in the science of arms? this is a point which will be inclined to dispute with you, and stoutly. Have you, then, forgotten the conqueror of Europe, the Charlemagne of the nineteenth century, he who is distinguished by the splendid titles of the great, the pious, the beneficent, and the just? the glorious conqueror,

who

Merch. Prostituted titles! "Ill-weaved ambition" is every way undeserving of them. The dictator, to whom you allude, may rank, indeed, in the class of "heroes," "men," as is observed by a celebrated writer, "who can never enjoy quiet themselves until they have taken it from all the world." Engaged in battle, it is glorious to become the conqueror; but still humanity cries out loudly against an ignis fatuus which leads to the destruction of our kind.

Sold. You are of opinion, then, that there is no true glory to be derived from the exercise of war.

Merch. Unquestionably none, when prompted to it by the love of power, the hope of conquest, or the desire of revenge. An excellent moralist has said,-“ The peace of the world is interrupted at one time by the