ter having read all,
aye, all, that has been written about a certain subject by all the
"many men of genius" who have treated it--which it would only require
the lifetime of a Methuselah to do--has discovered an idea relating to
it, which is to be found in none of the works of those "many men of
genius," and this she has revealed for the edification and astonishment
of the world, in the sentence we have quoted above. How every lover of
new ideas now living, should bless his stars for having cast his
existence in the same period as that of her Ladyship! It is, however,
our melancholy duty, to be obliged to deprive our generation of the
glory which would be shed upon it by such an intellectual invention as
the foregoing. Though it has undoubtedly never been adverted to in any
way, since she so asserts the fact, by any of the "many men of genius"
who have exercised their minds upon the topic of the unities, yet by a
singular chance we have fallen upon something very much like it in the
petty effusions of two or three subordinate scribblers, who have
presumed to hint at what was not excogitated by their betters. One of
those effusions is a paper called a "Preface to Shakspeare," written
about fifty years ago, as we have discovered, after long research and a
great deal of trouble, by a certain Samuel Johnson, who dubbed himself
Doctor, and published likewise, if our investigations have informed us
rightly, other works, under the titles of "The Rambler," "Rasselas,"
"Biographies of the British Poets," &c., and tradition even says that he
attempted a dictionary of the English language. Another of those
effusions is an "Essay upon the Drama," by a person called Walter Scott,
who, it is affirmed, is still in the land of the living, but where he
dwelleth, and what other productions he hath printed, we have been able
to obtain no clue for finding out. It must indeed be confessed, that
neither of those individuals has so "clearly laid it down" as her
Ladyship, that the audience should be pleased, "_no matter by what
means_," though they certainly have intimated that its gratification
ought to be one of the principal objects of a dramatic author. They were
foolish enough to think, that to pander to the tastes of an audience, if
corrupt and vitiated, is paltry, is despicable; that to consult its
inclinations when at war with sound taste or proper decorum, is to do
the work of those who are influenced only by a love of sordid gain,
rec