n produces one mode of excellence, and inaction another:
The Chronicle, the Novel, or the Ballad; the king, or the beggar, the
hero, the madman, the sot, or the fool; it is all one;--nothing is worse,
nothing is better: The same genius pervades and is equally admirable in
all. Or, is a character to be shewn in progressive change, and the events
of years comprized within the hour;--with what a Magic hand does he prepare
and scatter his spells! The Understanding must, in the first place, be
subdued; and lo! how the rooted prejudices of the child spring up to
confound the man! The Weird sisters rise, and order is extinguished. The
laws of nature give way, and leave nothing in our minds but wildness and
horror. No pause is allowed us for reflection: Horrid sentiment, furious
guilt and compunction, air-drawn daggers, murders, ghosts, and
inchantment, shake and _possess us wholly_. In the mean time the _process_
is completed. _Macbeth_ changes under our eye, _the milk of human kindness
is converted to gall; he has supped full of horrors_, and his _May of life
is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf_; whilst we, the fools of
amazement, are insensible to the shifting of place and the lapse of time,
and, till the curtain drops, never once wake to the truth of things, or
recognize the laws of existence.--On such an occasion, a fellow, like
_Rymer_, waking from his trance, shall lift up his Constable's staff, and
charge this great Magician, this daring _practicer of arts inhibited_, in
the name of _Aristotle_, to surrender; whilst _Aristotle_ himself,
disowning his wretched Officer, would fall prostrate at his feet and
acknowledge his supremacy.--O supreme of Dramatic excellence! (_might he
say_) not to me be imputed the insolence of fools. The bards of _Greece_
were confined within the narrow circle of the Chorus, and hence they found
themselves constrained to practice, for the most part, the precision, and
copy the details of nature. I followed them, and knew not that a larger
circle might be drawn, and the Drama extended to the whole reach of human
genius. Convinced, I see that a more compendious _nature_ may be obtained;
a nature of _effects_ only, to which neither the relations of place, or
continuity of time, are always essential. Nature, condescending to the
faculties and apprehensions of man, has drawn through human life a regular
chain of visible causes and effects: But Poetry delights in surprise,
conceals her steps, seize