Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/36

 picture of a real original; as repreenting to the auditor what he would himelf feel, if he were to do or uffer what is there feigned to be uffered or to be done. The reflection that trikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourelves may be expoed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourelves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the poibility than uppoe the preence of miery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when he remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our conciounes of fiction; if we thought murders and treaons real, they would pleae no more.

Imitations produce pain or pleaure not becaue they are mitaken for realities, but becaue they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landcape, the trees are not uppoed capable to give us hade, or the fountains coolnes; but we conider, how we hould be pleaed with uch fountains playing beide us, and uch woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the hitory of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increae or diminih its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always les. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what geture can hope to add dignity or force to the oliloquy of Cato? A play