uperior to that of Cornelia
in the "Pompey" of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything like
fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends
sometimes to bombast. Mr. Addison's Cato appears to me the greatest
character that was ever brought upon any stage, but then the rest of them
do not correspond to the dignity of it, and this dramatic piece, so
excellently well writ, is disfigured by a dull love plot, which spreads a
certain languor over the whole, that quite murders it.

The custom of introducing love at random and at any rate in the drama
passed from Paris to London about 1660, with our ribbons and our
perruques. The ladies who adorn the theatrical circle there, in like
manner as in this city, will suffer love only to be the theme of every
conversation. The judicious Mr. Addison had the effeminate complaisance
to soften the severity of his dramatic character, so as to adapt it to
the manners of the age, and, from an endeavour to please, quite ruined a
masterpiece in its kind. Since his time the drama is become more
regular, the audience more difficult to be pleased, and writers more
correct and less bold. I have seen some new pieces that were written
with great regularity, but which, at the same time, were very flat and
insipid. One would think that the English had been hitherto formed to
produce irregular beauties only. The shining monsters of Shakspeare give
infinite more delight than the judicious images of the moderns. Hitherto
the poetical genius of the English resembles a tufted tree planted by the
hand of Nature, that throws out a thousand branches at random, and
spreads unequally, but with great vigour. It dies if you attempt to
force its nature, and to lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees
of the Garden of Marli.

LETTER XIX.--ON COMEDY

I am surprised that the judicious and ingenious Mr. de Muralt, who has
published some letters on the English and French nations, should have
confined himself; in treating of comedy, merely to censure Shadwell the
comic writer. This author was had in pretty great contempt in Mr. de
Muralt's time, and was not the poet of the polite part of the nation. His
dramatic pieces, which pleased some time in acting, were despised by all
persons of taste, and might be compared to many plays which I have seen
in France, that drew crowds to the playhouse, at the same time that they
were intolerable to read; and of which it might