representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently,
there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to
an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has been
the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must first
determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And here, as I
have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical decision;--the
French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to be aimed
at,--an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to
it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout
in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the
impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an
intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term
illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality and character by
reference to our mental state when dreaming. In both cases we simply do
not judge the imagery to be unreal; there is a negative reality, and no
more. Whatever, therefore, tends to prevent the mind from placing itself,
or being placed, gradually in that state in which the images have such
negative reality for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is
dramatically improbable.

Now, the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend on
the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many things
would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not at all
interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the narrow
cockpit may be made to hold

"The vasty field of France, or we may cram
Within its wooden O, the very casques,
That did affright the air at Agincourt."

Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, as
belonging to the groundwork of the story rather than to the drama itself,
in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from all
illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's division
of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia.

But, although the other excellences of the drama besides this dramatic
probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination of
the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they tend
to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the chief
end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,--ye