genus confused[1] with the camel, or a white elephant attracted the eye of the crowd. He would view the people more attentively than the sports themselves, as affording him more strange sights than the actor: and for the writers, he would think they told their story to a deaf ass. For what voices are able to overbear the din with which our theaters resound? You would think the groves of Garganus, or the Tuscan Sea, was roaring; with so great noise are viewed the shows and contrivances, and foreign riches: with which the actor being daubed over, as soon as he appears upon the stage, each right hand encounters with the left. Has he said any thing yet? Nothing at all. What then pleases? The cloth imitating [the color of] violets, with the dye of Tarentum.
And, that you may not think I enviously praise those kinds of writing which I decline undertaking, when others handle them well: that poet to me seems able to walk upon an extended rope,[2] who with his fictions[3] grieves my soul, enrages, soothes, fills it with false terrors, as an enchanter; and sets me now in Thebes, now in Athens.[4]
But of those too, who had rather trust themselves with a reader, than bear the disdain of an haughty spectator, use a
- ↑ Diversum confusa genus. “Panthera camelo confusa, diversum tamen ab utroque genus” is the construction. This creature was first shown to the people by Julius Cæsar, as a tame tiger was by Augustus. Torr.
- ↑ The Romans, who were immoderately addicted to spectacles of every kind, had in particular esteem the funambuli, or rope-dancers;
“Ita populus studio stupidus in funambulo
Animum occupârat.” Prol. in Hecyr.
From the admiration of whose tricks the expression “ire per extentum funem” came to denote, proverbially, an uncommon degree of excellence and perfection in any thing. The allusion is here made with much pleasantry, as the poet had just been rallying their fondness for these extraordinary achievements. Hurd. - ↑ Qui pectus inaniter angit. The word inaniter, as well as falsis, applied in the following line to terroribus, would express that wondrous force of dramatic representation, which compels us to take part in feigned adventures and situations, as if they were real; and exercises the passions with the same violence in remote, fancied scenes, as in the present distresses of real life. Hurd.
- ↑ We must understand this of different plays, for the Greek and Roman stage by no means allowed that change of scones which is indulged to an English theater. Argos, Thebes, Athens, according to the expression of Torrentius, were the dwelling-houses of tragedy. Fran.
