always, made their
appearance there. Even so, however, there are perhaps few instances in
theatrical history in which so unequal a competition was so long
sustained. In the hands of the tragic poets of the age of Pope, as well
as that of Johnson, tragedy had hopelessly stiffened into the forms of
its accepted French models. Direct reproductions of these continued, as
in Ambrose Philips's and Charles Johnson's (1679-1748) translations from
Racine, and Aaron Hill's from Voltaire. Among other tragic dramatists of
the earlier part of the century may be mentioned J. Hughes, who, after
assisting Addison in his _Cato_, produced at least one praiseworthy
tragedy of his own;[236] E. Fenton, a joint translator of "Pope's
_Homer_" and the author of one extremely successful drama on a theme of
singularly enduring interest,[237] and L. Theobald the first hero of the
_Dunciad_, who, besides translations of Greek dramas, produced a few
more or less original plays, one of which he was daring enough to father
upon Shakespeare.[238] A more distinguished name is that of J. Thomson,
whose unlucky _Sophonisba_ and subsequent tragedies are, however, barely
remembered by the side of his poems (_The Seasons_, &c.). The literary
genius of E. Young, on the other hand, possessed vigour and variety
enough to distinguish his tragedies from the ordinary level of Augustan
plays; in one of them he seems to challenge comparison in the treatment
of his theme with a very different rival,[239] but by his main
characteristics as a dramatist he belongs to the school of his
contemporaries. The endeavour of G. Lillo, in his _London Merchant, or
George Barnwell_ (1731), to bring the tragic lessons of terror and pity
directly home to his fellow-citizens exercised an extraordinarily
widespread as well as enduring effect on the history of the 18th-century
drama. At home, they gave birth to the new, or, more properly speaking,
to the revived, species of domestic tragedy, which connects itself more
or less closely with a notable epoch in the history of English
prose-fiction as well as of English painting. Abroad, this play--whose
success was of the kind which nothing can kill--supplied the text to the
teachings of Diderot, as well as an example to his own dramatic
attempts; and through Diderot the impulse communicated itself to
Lessing, and long exercised a great effect upon the literature of the
German stage. At the same time, it must be allowed that Lillo's
pedes