parody
but the absurdities of dramatic writers, who frequently make their
heroes act against nature, common sense, and truth? After all," he
ingeniously adds, "it is the public, not we, who are the authors of
these? PARODIES; for they are usually but the echoes of the pit, and we
parodists have only to give a dramatic form to the opinions and
observations we hear. Many tragedies," Fuzelier, with admirable truth,
observes, "disguise vices into virtues, and PARODIES unmask them." We
have had tragedies recently which very much required parodies to expose
them, and to shame our inconsiderate audiences, who patronised these
monsters of false passions. The rants and bombast of some of these might
have produced, with little or no alteration of the inflated originals,
_A Modern Rehearsal_, or a new _Tragedy for Warm Weather_.[296]

Of PARODIES, we may safely approve the legitimate use, and even indulge
their agreeable maliciousness; while we must still dread that
extraordinary facility to which the public, or rather human nature, is
so prone, as sometimes to laugh at what at another time they would shed
tears.

Tragedy is rendered comic or burlesque by altering the _station_ and
_manners_ of the _persons_; and the reverse may occur, of raising what
is comic or burlesque into tragedy. On so little depends the sublime or
the ridiculous! Beattie says, "In most human characters there are
blemishes, moral, intellectual, or corporeal; by exaggerating which, to
a certain degree, you may form a comic character; as by raising the
virtues, abilities, or external advantages of individuals, you form
epic or tragic characters;[297] a subject humorously touched on by
Lloyd, in the prologue to _The Jealous Wife_.

Quarrels, upbraidings, jealousies, and spleen,
Grow too familiar in the comic scene;
Tinge but the language with heroic chime,
'Tis passion, pathos, character sublime.
What big round words had swell'd the pompous scene,
A king the husband, and the wife a queen.

ANECDOTES OF THE FAIRFAX FAMILY.

Will a mind of great capacity be reduced to mediocrity by the ill choice
of a profession?

Parents are interested in the metaphysical discussion, whether there
really exists an inherent quality in the human intellect which imparts
to the individual an aptitude for one pursuit more than for another.
What Lord Shaftesbury calls not innate, but connatural qualities of the
human character, were, during t