asure, to be fit judges.

"Though I see many excellent thoughts in SENECA: yet he, of them, who had
a genius most proper for the Stage, was OVID. He [_i.e., OVID_] had a way
of writing so fit to stir up a pleasing admiration and concernment, which
are the objects of a Tragedy; and to show the various movements of a soul
combating betwixt different passions: that, had he lived in our Age, or
(in his own) could have writ with our advantages, no man but must have
yielded to him; and therefore, I am confident the _MEDEA_ is none of his.
For, though I esteem it, for the gravity and sentiousness of it (which he
himself concludes to be suitable to a Tragedy, _Omne genus scripti
gravitate Tragadia, vincit_); yet it moves not my soul enough, to judge
that he, who, in the Epic way, wrote things so near the Drama (as the
stories of _MYRRHA,_ of _CAUNUS and BIBLIS,_ and the rest) should stir up
no more concernment, where he most endeavoured it.

"The masterpiece of SENECA, I hold to be that Scene in the _Troades_,
where _ULYSSES_ is seeking for _ASTYANAX,_ to kill him. There, you see
the tenderness of a mother so represented in _ANDROMACHE_, that it raises
compassion to a high degree in the reader; and bears the nearest
resemblance, of anything in their Tragedies, to the excellent Scenes of
Passion in SHAKESPEARE or in FLETCHER.

"For Love Scenes, you will find but few among them. Their Tragic poets
dealt not with that soft passion; but with Lust, Cruelty, Revenge,
Ambition, and those bloody actions they produced, which were more capable
of raising horror than compassion in an audience: leaving Love untouched,
whose gentleness would have tempered them; which is the most frequent of
all the passions, and which (being the private concernment of every
person) is soothed by viewing its own Image [p. 549] in a public
entertainment.

"Among their Comedies, we find a Scene or two of tenderness: and that,
where you would least expect it, in PLAUTUS. But to speak generally,
their lovers say little, when they see each others but anima mea! vita
mea! [Greek: zoae kai psuchae!] as the women, in JUVENAL's time, used to
cry out, in the fury of their kindness.

"Then indeed, to speak sense were an offence. Any sudden gust of passion,
as an ecstasy of love in an unexpected meeting, cannot better be expressed
than in a word and a sigh, breaking one another. Nature is dumb on such
occasions; and to make her speak, would be to represent her unlik