hewing
me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm at sea without
any vessel or boat introduced, my little boy, then about five years old,
came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once (if I may so say)
_tumbled in_ upon the print. He instantly started, stood silent and
motionless, with the strongest expression, first of wonder and then of
grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length said "And where is the
ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all drowned!" still keeping his
eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures are to little children, stage
illusion is to men, provided they retain any part of the child's
sensibility; except, that in the latter instance, the suspension of the
act of comparison, which permits this sort of negative belief, is somewhat
more assisted by the will, than in that of a child respecting a picture.

The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists--not in
the mind's judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the
judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is so
important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may arise,
and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual delusion
(the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their theory,
and on which the French poets justify the construction of their
tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems the end of Dr.
Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the very
same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged probable by
us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties in even
balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should
serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not only are we
never absolutely deluded--or any thing like it, but the attempt to cause
the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses sitting in a
theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, which, feeling that
they cannot affect the heart or head permanently, endeavour to call forth
the momentary affections. There ought never to be more pain than is
compatible with coexisting pleasure, and to be amply repaid by thought.

Shakespeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous
character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high
language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;--a greater
assimilation to nature, a