a poem in the opinion of those who confine this term to what is heroic or marvellous; but it is a poem to those who mai e poetry to consist in invention and picture. To some it appears, that a Comedy which is in verse is a poem, and that a Comedy in prose is not so; and they be better that we could exchange, this p opensity for a philosophical pity but it is easier and more ce tard to employ the malice natural to mankind in the correction of the viles; as we employ the poits of one diamond to polish another. This improvement is the object or the end of Comedy.argue, that measure is as essential to poetry as to music But this is cism. It is a common error to distin, the mere squeamishness of critiguish Traedy from Comedy by the rank of its personages; for the King of Thebes, and even Jupiter The approximation of the fichimself. are comic pe so a; es intion to real life. is the generale rule Anphy rion. It is so erroneous to distinguish the former from the latter, by the heights of the passions which it represents; for the despair of the miser for the loss of his purse, is as great as the despair of the most accomplished lover for the supposed or real desertion of his mistress. Misfortunes perils, dangers, and brillant sentiments, characterise Tragedy; but common interests and common characters are peculiar to Comedy. The former paints men as they are sometimes; the latter describes them as they are com monly. Tragedy is a representation of history: Comedy is a por trait, not indeed of one individual, but of several, or of a society. It ought not, however, to be forgot, that vice is not appropriated to Comedy, but in so far as it excites ridicule or contempt, Some authors have asked, Is Comedy a poem? This is a des of dramatic composition But this approximation must be greater in Comedy than in Tragedy; for the acuon of Comedy is more fa miliar, there is of consequence, a more rigid attention to life expċcted from the comic than the tragic poct. Hence, it is, that in Comedy the theatrical illusion must result from the unity of the piece, the exactness of character, the ease and simplicity of the plot, the familiar propriety of the dialogue, the justness of the sentiments, and the art which conceals art in the production of the situations. If we consider the multitude of strokes which are necessary to characterize a comic persnage, we shall be apt to conclude, that a Comedy is an exaggerated imitation of life. In fact, it is difficult to conceive, that one man in one day should give so many examples of avarice as the Miser in Moliere. But this exaggeration, while it is produced by covered by art; and it is this ari which is the most difficult province of the comic drama. In a country where every man is in some measure a part of the legislature, and takes a pride in being independent, there must ex ist a great many original characters, and there must rise up perpetual materials for Comedy. Affectations of singularity give a zest to pleasantry. Such is the high and fruitful sources of the comic drama of England. It is simple, natural, and philosophical; but it is sometimes careless, and sometimes obscene. in which ought never to appear omedy but which often disgrace many celebrated dramas.The first is a play of words, This feeble source of wit ought to be eft to those miserable writers who have no abity, no learning, and no taste. The second is obscenity. There are men so involved in vice, and so accustomed to impu itics, that they are delighted with strokes of this kind. But the dan. ger to manners, and the delicacy that is due to women, ought to proscribe all sallies of this kind.It is wrong, however, to suppose that there can be no wit in obscenity. There may be a peat deal. The third is a propensity In France, a country where the to parody. This defect is comforms of the government give a mon among writers who have no stability to polished and soft man-invention. A Burlesque imitation ners, there are fewer distinctions or parody of a great author may of character. One man is a repre- indeed dispose an audience to sentative of the nation. Here, laugh but while it is meant to therefore, Comedy is less rich and vilify any noble passages, it is at various. But it is more polite.he same time so easy, that the efmore elevated, and more refined. fort can merit no praise. AristoWith reward to utility and mo- phanes was the first author who rals, it is to be thought that Com- indulged in this practice; but this edy is more advantageous than merit cannot give a sanction to it, Tragedy. The scenes it describes and perhaps it ought never to be are more in the ordinary course of followed but to humble some wrihuman ilfe. The examples it holdster of eininence, who is disposed out are therefore more striking. to be impudent or vain. Its interesting, and instructive. ridicule excites shame; and the pride of men is piqued to avoid contempt. Indeed virtue may rank pride among the chief of its sup. ports. Some pious divines have exclaimed against Comedies, as destructive to religion and morality : but these grave and insipid personages did not perceive, that it is. the object of Comedy to reform There are three circumstances mankind, by exhibiting their de oring to be like our father in heaven, who is kind to the evil and unthankful. Where divine love is made the motion to social, the narrow and selfish vanish in the expanded stream of benevolent sensations. Carisuan love glowing warm and genuine in the heart, consumes the force of the selfish principle; as the iod of Aalon swallowed up the rods of the magicians. fects and ridiculing the vices. It in professing love, but in, endeavaccordingly has produced a great deal of good in society. Perhaps, indeed, it has been more successfu. in this way that even the pulpit; and this very circumstance may very puss.bly be the secret reason, why the clergy have been so assiduous to defame the theatre. But the theatre will last as long as the church; and, as Comedians are now growing in o respect, they may take a fancy to instruci more by their lives and conversation, than the bench of Bishops.— They act their parts, at least, with the peopled world, are indeed, ausinfinitely greater care and enter-picions to virtue; but continued, tainment. SELECTED For the Lady's Miscellany. CHARITY. The love of God, to be pure and hoty,must be identified with the love of our neighbour. It other words divine love, impelling us to do good to all men as we have opportunity. His bosom, therefore, possesses the genuine principle of divine love, the elementary flame of immortal happiness, whose actions and affections are consonate to the two great commandments. Thus the Christian system blends religion and mortality in an indissolu-, ble union. The neglect of one is the neglect of both. To disjoin devotion and morals is to renounce the Gospel. The purest adoration which we can pay to God, is not Short intervals of absence from and habitual solitude chills the bosom against the warm impulses of benevolence, and freezes the best blood, that the sympathetic affec. tions would circulate through the heart. In Paradise it was not good for man to be alone; and certainly, in that state of complicated joy and sorrow to which we are born, and m which we have to live, it cannot be good for us to be a lone. the fading spirits require the refreshing intercourse of sociel. The messenger of immortality has denounced the selfish in this awful sentence-"Go ye cursed into everlasting," while they, who feeling the divine glow of love unferned, labor, like ministering angels, to soothe the diversified miseries of human life, shall be called blessed of my Father,' and when all the grandeur of the world crumbles into dust, shall shine like the stars forever. Thus it appears that the test of vital religion, is not high professions nor merely the effervessing sensations of devotional zeal but the exercise of those benevolent sympathies, which endear men to God while they endear them to each other. Let us constantly try ourselves by this test, and we shall not be deceived. But if we make religion to consist in those 'umultuous emotions which do not lead us to be humble, compassionate or kind, or in a bare assent to those doctrines which have no influence on human conduct, we are only opening a door by which fanaticism and hypocricy may enter into this sanctuary and usurp the name of that Spirit which abounds in the fruits of righteousness. From the Freemason's Magazine. GENUINE LOVE-LETTER. Peter Plainman to Priscilla Prudish. MADAM, your eyes, because I am so strange a fellow as to consider them philosophically. They are very brilhant, to be sure; but what are they? What are they, madam, ab origine? Fops, fools, and poets would in their usual airy manner, tell you, that they were made of celestial fire; that they were two animated balls of beauty; two love-darting mirrors, formed by the graces, and a pack of such stuff: but I scorn to figure away at the expence of fair truth. I write in honest prose, madam ; and therefore in honest prose I tell you, that those same balls of etherial beauty, those same lovedarting mirrors, are at best two pieces of ordinary clay varnished. The varnish I allow is good, and well put on; thanks to the sound health of your father and mother: but what of all this? I am not such a short-sighted amorous puppy, but I can look forward, a little beyond the length of my nose, to the time when the gloss will all be worn away; when the japan of nature will be utterly gone; and the devil a spark of fire will you have about you. you live long enough, you will be purblind; and then what becomes of your love-darters? don't be quite so vain, my young beauty. I am a little afraid you and I shall never come together. There is that expectation of flattery about you that I cannot bear. Yet, as I love you well enough to be honest -a bold word that-I will once for all speak my mind; and I desire your attention. I believe I do not admire you or value you for any one of those charms which you admite and value yourself. I do not, for instance, pay any adoration to the present brightness of If Another mighty matter upon which you have, it seems, to pique yourself is your face: I mean such things as we cail cheeks, lips, and complexion. I wish it to be known to you, that I have but a very poor opinion of these divine graces, as 1 you call them. Some time ago, I remember you showed me, in a great air of triumph, a paper scrawled upon by some florid puppy of your acquaintance, who swore, (in very sorry verses) that your cheek threw into utter des pair all the lillies and roses in the creation; your skin, too, was, if I recollect, polished marble; the veins were compared to the azure of the third heaven; and the color was whiter than alabaster.-'Tis a lie, Priscilla, 'tis a sad lie; hear, or read of such idle and vain flattery, I exclaim, with the modestcontempt for which my charac. ter is noted, The De'el take these wits, they're jackasses! Tumble down their vile books from my shelves; The goddesses makes of our lasses, And simpletons make of themselves. Fidelity, my dear Priscilla, produces the endearing tie of mu:ual love increasing every day, and end you are indebted to poetical fic-ing but with life; for want of this many a girl is foolishly betrayed: seduced by flattering lies, which cancel every tic and noble virtue in the breast; for what is begun with lies ends usually with sorrow. Pain sincerity, whooing unadorned simplicity, will produce better ruis then all the contagious levi. ties contrived by the dreamers upon the two-topt hill they call Parnas. sus can do. tion for all this trash: the rogues who deal in it have, as they tell us, a license from Apollo to play such tricks with idle girls and boys who believe them. For my part I never could be taken in by the tag of rhyme, nor the cadence of a couplet. nor the transposition of ten saucy syllables s c I was bo n. I always looked upon thei as mere ear-traps What a collec tion of falsities is cr, indeed! I never saw a pair of checks in my life that were fairer than a lilly.nor a pair of lips that were redde than a rose. As to alabaster, I will take upon me to say, there never was a woman's skin half so white in the whole world; and I should be very glad to see a complexion so well polished as a piece of Egyptian marble. No, no: these flights won't pass upon men of cool prese. They won't do with men of cool reflection, who consider things not as they ought to be, but as they are, and as they will become a little time hence so that when I discoverthey dreamed only in court Sincerity is now so little known, and so arely practised, that the n me alone is scarely remembered. Courtship is now only carried on as a trial of dexterity; hypocrisy sup ports the fraud, til avarice or interes find a fit occasion to with daw the mask; then, Priscilla, protestations and artificial graces vanish into air; and the phan tom, called friendship, gives way to the most sordid vices. Love, or whatever it is called, flies out of the window and the deluded victims to their imaginations, soon |