objected to Callippides, and is now objected to others, whose gestures resemble those of immodest women. Farther Tragedy, as well as the epic, is capable of producing its effect, even without action; we can judge of it perfectly by reading. If, then, in other respects, Tragedy be superior, it is sufficient that the fault here objected is not essential to it. It Tragedy has the advantage in the following respects. possesses all that is possessed by the epic; it might even adopt its metre; and to this it makes no inconsiderable addition, in the music and the decoration; by the latter of which, the illusion is heightened, and the pleasure, arising from the action, is rendered more sensible and striking. It has the advantage of greater clearness and distinctness of impression, as well in reading, as in representation. that any epic poem For, supposing the consequence must be, It has also that, of attaining the end of its imitation in a shorter compass: for the effect is more pleasurable, when produced by a short and close series of impressions, than when weakened by diffusion through a long extent of time; as the Edipus of Sophocles, for example, would be, if it were drawn out to the length of the Iliad. Farther there is less unity in all epic imitation; as appears from this will furnish matter for several tragedies. poet to choose a fable strictly one, the either, that his poem, if proportionably contracted, will appear curtailed and defective, or, if extended to the usual length, will become weak, and, as it were, diluted. If, on the other hand, we suppose him to employ several fables—that is, a fable composed of several actions-his imitation is no longer strictly one. The Iliad, for example, and the Odyssey contain many such subordinate parts, each of which has a certain magnitude, and unity, of its own; yet is the construction of those poems as perfect, and as nearly approaching to the imitation of a single action, as possible. If, then, Tragedy be superior to the Epic in all these respects, and also in the peculiar end at which it aims (for each species ought to afford, not any sort of pleasure indiscriminately, but such only as has been pointed out), it evidently follows, that Tragedy, as it attains. more N effectually the end of the art itself, must deserve the preference. And thus much concerning tragic and epic poetry in general, and their several species—the number and the differences of their parts the causes of their beauties and their defects the censures of critics, and the principles on which they are to be answered. AGE OF COMEDY. [PP. 195-216, Ed. London, 1699.] IN the fifty-first Epistle to Eteonicus, there is another moral sentence: Θνητοὺς γὰρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν, ὡς φασί τινες, οὐ προσήκει “ Mortal man ought not to entertain immortal anger (a)." But, I am afraid, he will have no better success with this than the former; for Aristotle, in his Rhetoric', among some other sententious verses, cites this Iambic, as commonly known: Αθάνατον ὀργὴν μὴ φύλαττε, θνητός ὢν. This, though the author of it be not named, was, probably, like most of those proverbial gnoma, borrowed from the stage; and, consequently, must be later than Phalaris, let it belong to what Poet you please, Tragic or Comic. But, because it may be suspected that the Poet himself might take the thought from common usage, and 1. Lib. ii. cap. 21. (a) Bentleius in immortali ista de Phalaridis epistolis dissertatione hæc verba, θνητούς γαρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν, ὡς φασί τινες, οὐ προσήκει, ex Euripide mutua sumta existimat, cui sane hactenus assentior. Verum, quod non vidit Vir summus, non sunt ista ex Euripide imitando expressa, sed sunt ipsa Tragici verba, ita legenda: θνητοὺς γὰρ ὄντας ἀθάνατον ὀργὴν ἔχειν Duo erant, quæ, ne Viri docti hoc perviderent, faciebant. Primum, quod nesciebant avávatov primam producere, quod apud omnes antiquos et genuinos Græciæ Poëtas semper fieri præstabo, alias forsitan Brunckii et aliorum errores castigaturus. Deinde paulo minus grati sunt numeri, quam in plerisque Tragicorum senariis, non tamen omnino inusitati.Porson. ad Eurip. Med. 139. |