ments of poetry, or the delicate flow
of numbers, but while we admire the poet, we pay no regard to the
character; no passion is excited, the heart is never moved, nor is the
reader's curiosity ever raised to know the event. Want of passion and
regard to character, is the error of our present dramatic poets,
and it is a true observation made by a gentleman in an occasional
prologue, speaking of the wits from Charles II. to our own times, he
says,

From bard, to bard, the frigid caution crept,
And declamation roared while passion slept.

But to return to our author's plays;

The Alexandraean Tragedy is built upon the differences about the
succession, that rose between Alexander's captains after his decease;
he has borrowed many thoughts, and translated whole speeches from
Seneca, Virgil, &c. In this play his lordship seems to mistake the
very essence of the drama, which consists in action, for there is
scarce one action performed in view of the audience, but several
persons are introduced upon the stage, who relate atchievements done
by themselves and others: the two first acts are entirely foreign to
the business of the play. Upon the whole it must be allowed that his
lordship was a very good historian, for the reader may learn from it a
great deal of the affairs of Greece and Rome; for the plot see Quintus
Curtius, the thirteenth Book of Justin, Diodorus Siculus, Jofephus,
Raleigh's History, &c. The Scene is in Babylon.

Craesus, a Tragedy; the Scene of this Play is laid in Sardis, and is
reckoned the most moving of the four; it is chiefly borrowed from
Herodotus, Clio, Justin, Plutarch's Life of Solon, Salian, Torniel. In
the fifth Act there is an Episode of Abradates and Panthaea, which the
author has taken from Xenophon's Cyropaedeia, or The Life and Education
of Cyrus, lib. vii. The ingenious Scudery has likewise built upon this
foundation, in his diverting Romance called the Grand Cyrus.

Darius, a Tragedy; this was his lordship's first dramatic performance;
it was printed at Edinburgh in 4to. in the year 1603; it was first
composed of a mixture of English and Scotch dialect, and even then was
commended by several copies of verses. The Scene of this Play is
laid in Babylon. The author afterwards not only polished his native
language, but altered the Play itself; as to the plot consult Q.
Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin, Plutarch's Life of Alexander, &c.
Julius Caesar, a Tragedy. In the fifth Act of thi