ſeems ſcarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent ſelection out of common converſation, and common occurrences.
Upon every other ſtage the univerſal agent is love, by whoſe power all good and evil is diſtributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppoſitions of intereſt, and harraſs them with violence of deſires inconſiſtent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous ſorrow; to diſtreſs them as nothing human ever was diſtreſſed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the buſineſs of a modern dramatiſt. For this, probability is violated, life is miſrepreſented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many paſſions, and as it has no great influence upon the ſum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he ſaw before him. He knew, that any other paſſion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cauſe of happineſs or calamity.
Characters thus ample and general were not eaſily diſcriminated and preſerved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his perſonages more diſtinct from each other. I will not ſay with Pope, that every ſpeech may be aſſigned to the proper ſpeaker, becauſe many ſpeeches there are which have nothing characteriſtical; but, perhaps, though ſome may be equally adapted to every perſon, it will be difficult to find any that can
be
