for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a ſingle moment, was ever credited.
The objection ariſing from the impoſſibility of paſſing the firſt hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, ſuppoſes, that when the play opens the ſpectator really imagines himſelf at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the ſtage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Deluſion, if deluſion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the ſpectator can be once perſuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Cæſar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharſalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a ſtate of elevation above the reach of reaſon, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may deſpiſe the circumſcriptions of terreſtrial nature. There is no reaſon why a mind thus wandering in ecſtaſy ſhould count the clock, or why an hour ſhould not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the ſtage a field.
The truth is, that the ſpectators are always in their ſenſes, and know, from the firſt act to the laſt, that the ſtage is only a ſtage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with juſt geſture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to ſome action, and an action muſt
be
