e discourse where I last visited
this evening; and a gentleman who knows that I am at present writing a
very deep tragedy, directed his discourse in a particular manner to me.
"It is the common fault," said he, "of you, gentlemen, who write in the
buskin style, that you give us rather the sentiments of such who behold
tragical events, than of such who bear a part in them themselves. I
would advise all who pretend this way, to read Shakespeare with care,
and they will soon be deterred from putting forth what is usually called
'tragedy.' The way of common writers in this kind, is rather the
description, than the expression of sorrow. There is no medium in these
attempts; and you must go to the very bottom of the heart, or it is all
mere language; and the writer of such lines is no more a poet, than a
man is a physician for knowing the names of distempers, without the
causes of them. Men of sense are professed enemies to all such empty
labours: for he who pretends to be sorrowful, and is not, is a wretch
yet more contemptible than he who pretends to be merry, and is not. Such
a tragedian is only maudlin drunk." The gentleman went on with much
warmth; but all he could say had little effect upon me: but when I came
hither, I so far observed his counsel, that I looked into Shakespeare.
The tragedy I dipped into was, "Harry the Fourth." In the scene where
Morton is preparing to tell Northumberland of his son's death, the old
man does not give him time to speak, but says,

"_The whiteness of thy cheeks
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand;
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone,
Drew Priam's curtain at the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt:
But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death ere thou reportest it_"[458]

The image in this place is wonderfully noble and great; yet this man in
all this is but rising towards his great affliction, and is still enough
himself, as you see, to make a simile: but when he is certain of his
son's death, he is lost to all patience, and gives up all the regards of
this life; and since the last of evils is fallen upon him, he calls for
it upon all the world.

"_Now let not Nature's hand
Keep the wild flood confined; let Order die,
And let the world no longer be a stage,
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first