tular objection, "in seven
scenes," and an assumed merit, in the term "classical." I abhor
scene-shifters; at least, their province lies more among pantomimes,
farces, and comedies, than in the region of the solemn tragic muse; her
incidents should rather partake of the sculpture-like dignity of
_tableaux_. My unfashionable taste approves not of a serious story being
cut up into a vast number of separate and shuffled sections; and the
whistle and sliding panels detract still more from the completeness of
illusion: I incline as much as is possible to the Classic unities of
time, place, and circumstances, wishing, moreover, every act to be a
scene, and every scene an act; with a comfortable green curtain, that
cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop,
mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away
with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet;
bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty of head-aches.

But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the
utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of
weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one
scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons,
and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming
insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a
staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to
our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something
a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and
moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly
patriotic '_Henry the Fifth?_'--However, taking other grounds, the
epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern
method of its treatment: but of all this enough, for, on second
thoughts, perhaps we may do without the chorus.

It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true
unity of time; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of
life, than the space of some three hours can allow for: we must
unavoidably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as
well have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet
is justified in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards
the goal of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates
arrests your critical ken, belie