e issued every month, forming two volumes in the year._

_To each number will be added, by way of appendix, an entire play or
after-piece, printed in a small elegant type, and paged so as to be
collected, at the end of each year, into a separate volume._

_The work will be embellished with elegant engravings by the first
artists._

THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

Vol. I. JANUARY 1810. No. 1.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.[2] _Hor. de Arte Poetica._

[Footnote 2:
What we _hear_
With weaker passion will affect the heart
Than when the faithful eye beholds the part. --_Francis._ ]

CHAPTER I.

OBJECTIONS TO THE STAGE CONSIDERED AND REFUTED.

That amusement is necessary to man, the most superficial observation of
his conduct and pursuits may convince us. The Creator never implanted in
the hearts of all his intelligent creatures one common universal
appetite without some corresponding necessity; and that he has given
them an instinctive appetite for amusements as strong as any other which
we labour to gratify, may be clearly perceived in the efforts of
infancy, in the exertions of youth, in the pursuits of manhood, in the
feeble endeavours of old age, and in the pastimes which human creatures,
even the uninstructed savage nations themselves, have invented for their
relaxation and delight. This appetite evinces a necessity for its
gratification as much as hunger, thirst, and weariness, intimate the
necessity of bodily refection by eating, drinking, and sleeping; and not
to yield obedience to that necessity, would be to counteract the
intentions of Providence, who would not have furnished us so bountifully
as he has with faculties for the perception of pleasure, if he had not
intended us to enjoy it. Had the Creator so willed it, the process
necessary to the support of existence here below might have been carried
on without the least enjoyment on our part: the daily waste of the body
might be repaired without the sweet sensations which attend eating and
drinking; we might have had the sense of hearing without the delight we
derive from sweet sounds; and that of smelling without the capability of
enjoying the fragrance of the rose: but He whose wisdom and beneficence
are above all comprehension, has ordained in another an