a man
uttering his complaints under such a mountain of feathers, I am apt
to look upon him rather as an unfortunate lunatic, than a distressed
hero.

"As these superfluous ornaments upon the head make a great man,
a princess generally receives her grandeur from those additional
encumbrances that fall into her tail; I mean the broad sweeping train
that follows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment for
a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to advantage. I do
not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my
eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and, as for the queen,
I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right
adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or
incommode her, as she walks to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my
opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a queen venting her passion in
a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while that
they do not ruffle the tail of her gown. The parts that the two
persons act on the stage at the same time are very different. The
princess is afraid lest she should incur the displeasure of the king
her father, or lose the hero, her lover, whilst her attendant is only
concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat."

In a succeeding paragraph the reader finds that a cherished
nineteenth-century custom--the representing of a vast army by the
employment of half-a-dozen ill-fed, unpainted supers--has at least the
sanction of age: "Another mechanical method of making great men, and
adding dignity to kings and queens, is to accompany them with halberts
and battle-axes. Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two
candle-snuffers, make up a complete body of guards upon the English
stage; and by the addition of a few porters dressed in red coats, can
represent above a dozen legions. I have sometimes seen a couple of
armies drawn up together upon the stage, when the poet has been
disposed to do honour to his generals. It is impossible for the
reader's imagination to multiply twenty men into such prodigious
multitudes, or to fancy that two or three hundred thousand soldiers
are fighting in a room of forty or fifty yards in compass. Incidents
of such a nature should be told, not represented."

Addison remarks that "the tailor and painter often contribute to the
success of a tragedy more than the poet," a trite saying which holds
good now, and he ends his essay