sably necessary to give to their performance, spirit,
and animation.

A dance without meaning is a very insipid botch. The subject of
the composition should always be strictly connected to the
dances, so as that they should be in equal correspondence to one
another. And, where a dance is expletively introduced in the
intervals of the acts, the subject of it should have, at least,
some affinity to the piece. A long custom has made the want of
this attention pass unnoticed. It is surely an absurd and an
unnatural patchwork, between the acts of a deep tragedy, to
bring on, abruptly by way of diversion, a comic dance. By this
contrast both entertainments are hurt; the abruptness of the
transition is intolerable to the audience; and the thread,
especially of the tragic fable, is unpleasingly broken. The
spectators cannot bear to be so suddenly tossed from the serious
to the mirthful, and from the mirthful to the serious. In short,
such an heterogeneous adulteration has all the absurdity
reproached to the motley mixture in tragi-comedy, without any
thing of that connection which is preserved in that kind of
justly exploded dramatic composition. How easy too to avoid this
defect, by adapting the subjects of the dances to the different
exigences of the different dramas, whether serious, comic, or
farcical!

One great source of this disorder, is probably the managers
considering dances in nothing better than in the light of merely
a mechanical execution for the amusement of the eye, and
incapable of speaking to the mind. And in this mistake they are
certainly justifiable by the great degeneracy of this art, from
the pitch of perfection to which it was antiently carried, and
to which the encouragement of the public could not fail to
restore it. The managers would then see their interest too
clearly in consulting the greater pleasure of the public, not to
afford to this art, the requisite cultivation and means of
improvement.

The composer, who must even have something of the poet in him;
the musician, the painter, the mechanic, are essentially
necessary to the contribution of their respective arts, towards
the harmony and perfection of composition, in a fine dramatic
dance; even the dresses are no inconsiderable part of the
entertainment. The _costume_, or in a more general term,
propriety, should have the direction of them. It is not
magnificence, that is the great point, but their being well
assorted to character and ci