the English stage, but is certainly, however noble in itself, very ill-placed here: 6 Approach me like a subject That serves the prince, yet not forgets the man.' Osman had no breath for words: Voltaire gives him but five hurried ones: 'Donne-qui la portait?—donne.' I am quite of your opinion, Sir H -,' said Mr. 6 -; and I may add, that even Voltaire seems to me too profuse of sentiments in Zara, which, beautiful as they are, and though expressed with infinite delicacy, are yet somewhat foreign to that native language which feeling dictates, and by which it is moved. I weep at a few simple words expressive of distress; I pause to admire a sentiment, and my pity is forgotten. The single line uttered by Lusignan, at the close of his description of the massacre of his wife and children, 'Helas! et j'etais père, et je ne pas mourir,' moves me more than a thousand sentiments, how just or eloquent soever.' 'If we think of the noblest use of tragedy,' said Mrs. we shall perhaps, sir, not be quite of your opinion. I, who am a mother, wish my children to learn some other virtues, beside compassion, at a play; it is certainly of greater consequence to improve the mind than to melt it.'--' I am sure, mamma,' said a young lady, her daughter, the sentiments of tragedy affect me as much as the most piteous description. When I hear an exalted sentiment, I feel my heart, as it were, swell in my bosom, 6 and it is always followed by a gush of tears from my eyes. You tell us the effects of your feelings, child; but you don't distinguish the feelings themselves. I would have, gentlemen,' continued she, ‘a play to be virtuous in its sentiments, and also natural in its events. The want of the latter quality, as well as of the former, has a bad effect on young persons; it leads them to suppose, that such a conduct is natural and allowable in common life, and encourages that romantic deception which is too apt to grow up in minds of sensibility. Don't you think, that the sudden conversion of Zara to Christianity, unsupported by argument, or conviction of its truth, is highly unnatural, and may have such a tendency as I have mentioned?'- I confess,' said Mr. 'that has always appeared to me an exceptionable passage.' I do not believe, mamma,' said the young lady, that she was really converted in opinion; but I don't wonder at her crying out she was a Christian, after such a speech as that of her father Lusignan. I know my heart was so wrung with the scene, that I could, at that moment, have almost become Mahometan, to have comforted the good old man.'—— Her mother smiled; for this was exactly a confirmation of her remark. Voltaire,' said Sir H▬▬▬, has, like many other authors, introduced a dark scene into the last act of this tragedy; yet it appears to me, that such a scene goes beyond the power of stage-deception, and always hurts the piece. We cannot possibly suppose, that two persons walking upon the same board do not see each other, while we, sitting in a distant part of the house, see both perfectly well.' - I do recollect,' said the young lady, at first, wondering how Zara could fail to see Osman; but I soon forgot it.'- Thus it always is,' replied Mr. M ' in such a case; if a poet has eloquence or genius enough to command the passions, he easily gets the better of those stage improbabilities. In truth, the scenic deception is of a very singular nature. It is impossible we should imagine ourselves spectators of the real scene, of which the stage one is an imitation; the utmost length we are, in reality, carried, is to deliver over our minds to that sympathy, which a proper and striking representation of grief, rage, or any other passion, produces. You destroy the deception, it is said, when any thing impertinent or ludicrous happens on the stage, or among the audience; but you will find the very same effect, if a child blows his three-halfpenny trumpet, in the midst of a solo of Fischer, or a song of Rauzzini; it stops the delightful current of feeling which was carrying along the soul at the time, and dissatisfaction and pain are the immediate consequence; yet in the solo or the song, no such deception as the theatrical is pretended.' Mr. delivered this with the manner of one who had studied the subject, and nobody ventured to answer him. You were mentioning,' said Mrs. • Voltaire's imitation of Othello, in this tragedy; I recollect, in the last act, a very strong instance of it, the concluding speech of Osman, before he stabs himself, which seems to be exactly taken from that of the Moor, in a similar situation.' speeches well,' said Sir H I remember both ' and I think it may be disputed, whether either of them be congenial to the situation.'- You will excuse me, Sir H‚' said I, ́ if I hold them both perfectly in nature. The calmness of desperate and irremediable grief will give vent to a speech longer and more methodical than the immediate anguish of some less deep and irretrievable calamity. Shakspeare makes Othello refer, in the in stant of stabbing himself, to a story of his killing a Turk in Aleppo; the moment of perturbation, when such a passage would have been unnatural, is past; the act of killing himself is then a matter of little importance; and his reference to a story seemingly indifferent marks, in my opinion, most forcibly and naturally, the deep and settled horror on Othello's soul. I prefer it to the concluding lines of the sultan's speech in Zara, which rest on the story of his own misfortune: x 'Tell 'em gd my dagger in her breast; or d, and thus revenged her.' Was * You have talked a great deal of the author,' said the young lady, but nothing of the actors. not the part of Zara excellently performed?'Admirably, indeed,' replied Mr.; I know no actress who possesses the power of speaking poetry beyond Miss Young. Nor of feeling it neither, sir, I think.'- 'I did not mean to deny her that quality; but, in the other, I think she is unrivalled. She does not reach, perhaps, the impassioned burst, the electric flash of Mrs. Barry; nor has she that deep and thrilling note of horror with which Mrs. Yates benumbs an audience; but there is a melting tremble in her voice, which, in tender passages, is inimitably beautiful and affecting. Were I a poet, I should prefer her speaking of my lines to that of any actress I ever heard.' 'She owes, I believe,' said our Frenchman, much of her present excellence to her study of the French stage. I mean not to detract from her merit: I certainly allow her more, when I say, that her excellence is, in great part, of her own acquirement, than some of her ill-judging admirers, who ascribe it all to Nature. Our actors, indeed, are rarely sensible how much study and application is due to their profession; people may be spouters without culture, but laborious education alone can make perfect actors. Feeling, and the imitative sympathy of passion, are, undoubtedly, derived from Nature; but art alone can bestow that grace, that refined expression, without which feeling will often be awkward, and passion ridiculous.' SINCERITY, by which I mean honesty in men's deal*ings with each other, is a virtue praised by every one, and the practice of it is, I believe, more common than gloomy moralists are willing to allow. The love of truth, and of justice, are so strongly implanted in our minds, that few men are so hardened, or so insensible, as knowingly and deliberately to commit dishonest actions; and a little observation soon convinces those who are engaged in a variety of transactions, that honesty is wisdom, and knavery folly. But though, according to this acceptation of the phrase, men are seldom insincere, or literally dishonest, in the ordinary transactions of life; yet, I believe, there is another and higher species of sincerity, which is very seldom to be met with in any degree of perfection; I mean that sincerity which leads a |