[2]
parts.[1] Though the observance or neglect of the much-debated unities in the concoction of a play, as Dryden expresses himself, may excite the praise or censure of the learned and curious; yet it must be allowed, that the Grecian or modern arrangement of acts and scenes is but a conventional merit or defect, that can contribute nothing either to the amend-
- ↑ That Sophocles, Euripides, and their contemporaries, were not inextricably bound by the unities, and that they might at their choice, and successfully, have varied the ancient form of tragedy, will not perhaps appear an improbable conjecture, when we reflect that, though a decree of the government did very materially alter the structure of comedy in Athens, yet it is no where found, that the New comedy was less favoured and followed in the days of Menander, than the Old had been in the time of Aristophanes.
