and absurd, will
not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great;
that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable
levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give
no dignity to nonsense or to folly.

"Comedy," says Horace, "sometimes raises her voice;" and Tragedy may
likewise on proper occasions abate her dignity; but as the comick
personages can only depart from their familiarity of style, when the
more violent passions are put in motion, the heroes and queens of
tragedy should never descend to trifle, but in the hours of ease, and
intermissions of danger. Yet in the tragedy of Don Sebastian, when the
king of Portugal is in the hands of his enemy, and having just drawn the
lot, by which he is condemned to die, breaks out into a wild boast that
his dust shall take possession of Africk, the dialogue proceeds thus
between the captive and his conqueror:

_Muley Moluch_. What shall I do to conquer thee?

_Seb_. Impossible!
Souls know no conquerors.

_M. Mol_. I'll shew thee for a monster thro' my Afric.

_Seb_. No, thou canst only shew me for a man:
Afric is stored with monsters; man's a prodigy
Thy subjects have not seen.

_M. Mol_. Thou talk'st as if
Still at the head of battle.

_Seb_. Thou mistak'st,
For there I would not talk.

_Benducar, the Minister_. Sure he would sleep.
This conversation, with the sly remark of the minister, can only be
found not to be comick, because it wants the probability necessary to
representations of common life, and degenerates too much towards
buffoonery and farce.

The same play affords a smart return of the general to to the emperor,
who, enforcing his orders for the death of Sebastian, vents his
impatience in this abrupt threat:

--No more replies,
But see thou dost it: Or--

To which Dorax answers,

Choak in that threat: I can say Or as loud.

A thousand instances of such impropriety might be produced, were not one
scene in Aureng-Zebe sufficient to exemplify it. Indamora, a captive
queen, having Aureng-Zebe for her lover, employs Arimant, to whose
charge she had been entrusted, and whom she had made sensible of her
charms, to carry her message to his rival.

ARIMANT, _with a letter in his hand_: INDAMORA.

_Arim_. And I the messenger to him from you?
Your empire you to tyranny pursue:
You lay commands both cruel and unjust,
To serve my rival, and bet