worth our trouble to examine briefly in what manner this passion,
which has always been deemed a weakness and a blemish in the greatest
characters, got such footing upon our stage. Corneille, who was the first
who brought the French tragedy to any perfection, and whom all the rest
have followed, found the whole nation enamoured with the perusal of
romances, and little disposed to admire any thing not resembling them.
From the desire of pleasing his audience, who were at the same time his
judges, he endeavoured to move them in the manner they had been accustomed
to be affected; and, by introducing love in his scenes, to bring them the
nearer to the predominant taste of the age for romance. From the same
source arose that multiplicity of incidents, episodes, and adventures,
with which our tragic pieces are crowded and obscured; so contrary to
probability, which will not admit such a number of extraordinary and
surprising events in the short space of four-and-twenty hours; so contrary
to the simplicity of ancient tragedy; and so adapted to conceal, by the
assemblage of so many different objects, the sterility of the genius of a
poet, more intent upon the marvellous, than upon the probable and natural.

Both the Greeks and Romans have preferred the iambic to the heroic verse
in their tragedies; not only because the first has a kind of dignity
better adapted to the stage, but, whilst it approaches nearer to prose,
retains sufficiently the air of poetry to please the ear; and yet has too
little of it to put the audience in mind of the poet, who ought not to
appear at all in representations, where other persons are supposed to
speak and act. Monsieur Dacier makes a very just reflection on this
subject. He says, that it is the misfortune of our tragedy to have almost
no other verse than what it has in common with epic poetry, elegy,
pastoral, satire, and comedy; whereas the learned languages have a great
variety of versification.

This inconvenience is highly obvious in our tragedy; which consequently is
obliged to lose sight of nature and probability, as it obliges heroes,
princes, kings, and queens, to express themselves in a pompous strain in
their familiar conversation, which it would be ridiculous to attempt in
real life. The giving utterance to the most impetuous passions in an
uniform cadence, and by hemistichs and rhymes, would undoubtedly be
tedious and offensive to the ear, if the charms of poetry, the elegance of
ex