Page:An Essay on the Opera's After the Italian Manner.pdf/31

 glih excel Mankind, and neglecting the mot noble and mot beneficial of all Entertainments, Tragedy; in which Nature has qualify’d us to excel all the Moderns.

What mut thoe Strangers ay, when they behold Englihmen applaud an Italian for Singing, or a Frenchman for Dancing, and the very moment afterwards explode an Englihman for the very ame things? What mut they ay, unles they have Candour enough to interpret it this way, that an Englihman is deervedly corned by Englishmen, when he decends o far beneath himelf, as to Sing or to Dance in publick, becaue by doing o he practies Arts which Nature has betow’d upon effeminate Nations, but denied to him, as below the Dignity of his Country, and the Majety of the Britih Genius.

What mut thoe Strangers ay, when they ee that we leave o reaonable and o intructive an Entertainment as Tragedy, for one o pernicious and o extremely aburd; for there is omething in the Italian Opera, which is Barbarous and Gothick, and o contrary to a true Tate, that an Opera in any Country can be only advanc’d by the ame Degrees that the Tate of Men is debauch’d for more generous Arts. Thus in Italy, where an Opera is mot advanc’d, there is no one who can write either Vere or Proe, nor any one who can judge of them. For when once the Italians were fal’n o low, as to prefer Sound to Sene, they quickly grew to write uch Sene that Sound deerv’d to be preferr’d to it.

If that is truly the mot Gothick, which is the mot oppos’d to Antick, nothing can be more Gothick than an Opera, ince nothing can be more oppos’d to the anciect Tragedy, than the modern Tragedy in Muick, becaue the one is reaonable, the other ridiculous; the