Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/22

10 eriounes and orrow, and ometimes levity and laughter.

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticim will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticim to nature. The end of writing is to intruct; the end of poetry is to intruct by pleaing. That the mingled drama may convey all the intruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, becaue it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by hewing how great machinations and lender deigns may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general ytem by unavoidable concatenation.

It is objected, that by this change of cenes the paions are interrupted in their progreion, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at lat the power to move, which contitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reaoning is o pecious, that it is received as true even by thoe who in daily experience feel it to be fale. The interchanges of mingled cenes eldom fail to produce the intended viciitudes of paion. Fiction cannot move o much, but that the attention may be eaily transferred; and though it mut be allowed that pleaing melancholy be ometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be conidered likewie, that melancholy is often not pleaing, and that the diturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have