and it is enough, you
know she is willing to be married, when the Fifth Act requires it.

"These are plots built after the Italian mode of houses. You see through
them all at once. The Characters, indeed, are Imitations of Nature: but
so narrow as if they had imitated only an eye or an hand, and did not
dare to venture on the lines of a face, or the proportion of a body.

"But in how strait a compass sorever, they have bounded their Plots and
Characters, we will pass it by, if they have regularly pursued them, and
perfectly observed those three Unities, of TIME, PLACE, and ACTION; the
knowledge of which, you say! is derived to us from them.

"But, in the first place, give me leave to tell you! that the Unity of
PLACE, however it might be practised by them, was never any of their
Rules. We neither find it in ARISTOTLE, HORACE, or any who have written
of it; till, in our Age, the French poets first made it a Precept of the
Stage.

"The Unity of TIME, even TERENCE himself, who was the best and most
regular of them, has neglected. His _Heautontimoroumenos_ or 'Self
Punisher' takes up, visibly, two days. 'Therefore,' says SCALIGER, 'the
two first Acts concluding the first day, were acted overnight; the last
three on the ensuing day.'

"And EURIPIDES, in tying himself to one day, has committed an absurdity
never to be forgiven him. For, in one of his Tragedies, he has made
THESEUS go from Athens to Thebes, which was about forty English miles;
under the walls of it, to give battle; and appear victorious in the next
Act: and yet, from the time of his departure, to the return of the
_Nuntius_, who gives relation of his victory; _AETHRA_ and the _Chorus_
have but thirty-six verses, that is, not for every mile, a verse.

"The like error is evident in TERENCE his _Eunuch_; when _LACHES_ the old
man, enters, in a mistake, the house of _THAIS_; where, between his _Exit_
and the Entrance of _PYTHIAS_ (who comes to give an ample relation of the
garboils he has raised within), _PARMENO_ who was left upon the stage,
has not above five lines to speak. _C'est bien employe, un temps si
court!_ says the French poet, who furnished me with one of the[se]
observations.

"And almost all their Tragedies will afford us examples of the like
nature.

"'Tis true, they have kept the Continuity, or as you called it, _Liaison
des Scenes_, somewhat better. Two do not perpetually come in together,
talk, and go out together; and other two succeed