eneral outlines are limited; but dissimulation, jealousy,
policy, ambition, desire of dominion, and other interests and passions,
are various without end, and take a thousand different forms in
different situations of history; so that, as long as there is tragedy,
there may be always novelty. Thus the jealous and dissembling
Mithridates, so happily painted by Racine, will not stand in the way of
a poet, who shall attempt a jealous and dissembling Tiberius. The stormy
violence of an Achilles will always leave room for the stormy violence
of Alexander.

But the case is very different with avarice, trifling vanity, hypocrisy,
and other vices, considered as ridiculous. It would be safer to double
and treble all the tragedies of our greatest poets, and use all their
subjects over and over, as has been done with Oedipus and Sophonisba,
than to bring again upon the stage, in five acts, a Miser, a Citizen
turned gentleman, a Tartuffe, and other subjects sufficiently known. Not
that these popular vices are less capable of diversification, or are
less varied by different circumstances, than the vices and passions of
heroes; but that if they were to be brought over again in comedies, they
would be less distinct, less exact, less forcible, and, consequently,
less applauded. Pleasantry and ridicule must be more strongly marked
than heroism and pathos, which support themselves by their own force.
Besides, though these two things, of so different natures, could support
themselves equally in equal variety, which is very far from being the
case, yet comedy, as it now stands, consists not in incidents, but in
characters. Now it is by incidents only that characters are diversified,
as well upon the stage of comedy, as upon the stage of life. Comedy, as
Moliere has left it, resembles the pictures of manners drawn by the
celebrated La Bruyere. Would any man, after him, venture to draw them
over again, he would expose himself to the fate of those who have
ventured to continue them. For instance, what could we add to his
character of the absent man? Shall we put him in other circumstances?
The principal strokes of absence of mind will always be the same; and
there are only those striking touches which are fit for a comedy, of
which, the end is painting after nature, but with strength and
sprightliness, like the designs of Callot. If comedy were among us what
it is in Spain, a kind of romance, consisting of many circumstances and
intrigues, pe