Imatges de pàgina
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a romantic account of his own exploits; and hearkening to no advice, but her own misplaced inclinations, fhe marries him. There was an officer under him, cunning and hypocritical, with an appearance of great honefty: he thought he had been wronged by his captain both in his bed, and in having another preferred before him. This to him feem'd fufficient reason for revenge; and cafting how to put his revenge in execution, no readier way offered itself, than to ftir up Othello to jealoufy, whose temper natu- · rally led him to that fatal paffion. Jealousy often arifes from an opinion of our own defects

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Solane perpetuâ maerens carpere juventâ ?
Nec dulces natos, Veneris nec praemia noris ?
Id cinerem, aut manes credis curare fepultos!

In short, the hero, by chance, foon after meets his mistress in a cave: a fort of a match is huddled up between 'em: and he, having gain'd his ends, watches an opportunity, and leaves her to despair and death. That even a religious lawgiver, and a founder of an empire fhould be caught with love, is no great wonder; but that he should complicate his crime with cruelty and treachery, is not this fomewhat out of character? And has not the poet a hard task to bring him fairly off, by the help of even his pagan-deities?

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to please; and Othello had too much reason to be apprehenfive of fuch defects in himself; as he was by complexion a Moor, and declined in years.

The art of the poet is beyond all praise, where he makes Iago kindle by degrees the flames of Othello's jealous temper, which bursting out into rage and fury, occafions firft the deftruction of his wife, and foon after his own.

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SECT. VIII.

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HESE three plays, of which I have, above given a short sketch, end with unhappy catastrophe; and all the stories are finely calculated to raise the tragical paffions, grief, pity, and terror. 'Tis fomewhat strange, at the first thought, that people should take any kind of delight to fee scenes of distress: yet even shipwrecks and ftorms at fea, when beheld from the fhore; and embattled armies

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1 Lucretius II, 1. &c. This is faid of the vulgar. The philofopher receives no pleasure from fuch objects, but prevents the paffion of grief, by confidering the neceffary and natural connexion, and relation of things. Storms, and tempefts, the violent effects of the perturbed paffions, &c. have no beauty confidered by themselves; yet they are Επιγεννήματα τῶν καλῶν.

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viewed with fafety from afar, raise a mixed kind of pleasure in the fpectator, partly from novelty, and partly from a pity of the misfortunes of other men, not without a recollection of his own fecurity. Now if the tragic muse can raise the paffions, and refine them too, is she not the hand-maid of philofophy?

But however it must be confeffed, that if any of Shakespeare's plays be plainly proved to have variety of fables and actions, independent each of the other, with no neceffary or probable connexion, then must these plays be faulty, and according to the common expreffion, without head or tail; like the picture described by 2 Horace, a mixture of incoherent and monftrous parts. Whereas in every poem there should be a natural union, as in a well proportion'd human body, where all is homogeneal, united, and compact together, fo as to form a whole.

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2 Horace in his art of poetry, y. 1. &c.

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3 A whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning fuppofes nothing wanting before itself; and requires fomething after it: the middle supposes something that went before, and requires fomething to follow after: the end requires nothing after itself, but fuppofes fomething that goes before. Ariftot. chap. vii. The ghoft informs Hamlet he had been murder'd: this is an exact beginning; no one wants to know any thing antecedent,

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It does not follow, because a hero is one man, that the fable is therefore one; for one man might be employed in variety of actions, and fables. So that to describe the whole hero, or the life and death of kings, and to make a historical detail of particular facts, is writing chronicles, not poems.

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but only the confequences; which are the middle the murderer being destroyed, the story ends, and nothing is required after. Othello privately marries Defdemona; this is the beginning: his jealoufy is the middle: the effects of his jealousy are the end. Macbeth's ambition is roused by the prediction of the witches; this is the beginning: his procuring the crown by murder is the middle his punishment, being the effects of his ambition, is the end. And thefe ftories are fuch, as the memory can eafily comprehend and retain, as a whole; sumpóvevlov. Just as beautiful objects, being neither vaft, nor diminutive, can eafily be measured by one united view of the eye; dovolov. Ariftot. xo. . Thus in all things that are beautiful unity is evident; by this, relations and proportions are discovered : but where there is no idea of a whole, there is no idea of order; and confequently no beauty.

4. The unity of the hero alone does not preserve the unity of the fable: nor is the poet to give a historical recital of the acts of Thefeus, or Hercules; nor, like Statius, to defcribe the whole hero,

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But has not Shakespeare been guilty of this very fault? Are not feveral of his plays called" hiftorical playsThe life and death of King John The life of K. Henry VIII. with many more of the like nature? And did not he think, that the unity of the hero conftituted the unity of the action? 'Tis true indeed, that the editors of Shakespeare have given a play of his the title of The life and death of King John. But whoever will confider this tragedy, will fee the title

By this means the unity of the action is deftroyed, as well as the fimplicity.

·Denique fit quodvis fimplex duntaxat et unum.

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Hor. art. p. . 23.

To this purpose Ariftotle in his poetics, chap. viii. Xę✩ 3v, καθάπερ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλοις μιμηλικαῖς ἡ μία μίμησις ἑνός ἐσιν, μιᾶς τε εἶναι, καὶ ταύτης ὅλης, καὶ τὰ μέρη συνεςάναι τῶν πραγμάτων ὕτως ώτε μεγαλιθεμένω τινὸς μέρες ἢ ἀφαιρεμένα, διαφέρεσθαι καὶ κινεῖσθαι τὸ ὅλον. ὁ γὰρ προσὸν ἢ μὴ προσὸν μηδὲν ποιεῖ ΕΠΙΔΗΛΟΝ, [lege ΕΠΙ ΤΟ ΟΛΟΝ,] ἐδὲ μόριον ΤΟΥΤΟ [fcribe TOYTOY] 5. 'Tis requifite therefore that as in other imitative arts, the imitation, which is one, is only of one thing, fo the fable, as it is the imitation of an action, fhould imitate an action, which is one, and befides this a whole; and that the parts of the feveral incidents fhould be fo combined together, that any one part being tranfpofed or retrenched, the whole should find the difference and be changed also. For whatever can be added or left out, yet fo as to make nothing

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