h the end for which the play is written. The design of a piece might
be utterly destroyed by the most natural incidents in the world. Boileau
has somewhere criticized with what surely is a very just severity on
Ariosto, for introducing a ludicrous tale from his host to one of the
principal persons of his poem, though the story has great merit in its
way. Indeed, that famous piece is so monstrous and extravagant in all
its parts that one is not particularly shocked with this indecorum. But,
as Boileau has observed, if Virgil had introduced AEneas listening to a
bawdy story from his host, what an episode had this formed in that
divine poem! Suppose, instead of AEneas, he had represented the impious
Mezentius as entertaining himself in that manner; such a thing would not
have been without probability, but it would have clashed with the very
first principles of taste, and, I would say, of common sense.

I have heard of a celebrated picture of the Last Supper,--and if I do
not mistake, it is said to be the work of some of the Flemish masters:
in this picture all the personages are drawn in a manner suitable to
the solemnity of the occasion; but the painter has filled the void under
the table with a dog gnawing bones. Who does not see the possibility of
such an incident, and, at the same time, the absurdity of introducing it
on such an occasion! Innumerable such cases might be stated. It is not
the incompatibility or agreeableness of incidents, characters, or
sentiments with the probable in fact, but with propriety in design, that
admits or excludes them from a place in any composition. We may as well
urge that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in a certain manner in the
earth, as a reason for building with these materials and in that manner,
as for writing according to the accidental disposition of characters in
Nature. I have, I am afraid, been longer than it might seem necessary in
refuting such a notion; but such authority can only be opposed by a good
deal of reason. We are not to forget that a play is, or ought to be, a
very short composition; that, if one passion or disposition is to be
wrought up with tolerable success, I believe it is as much as can in any
reason be expected. If there be scenes of distress and scenes of humor,
they must either be in a double or single plot. If there be a double
plot, there are in fact two. If they be in checkered scenes of serious
and comic, you are obliged continually to break both t