and ride the beginning of the course, they suffer you not to behold him', till he is in sight of the goal, and just upon you.

'For the second unity, which is that of Place, the 5 ancients meant by it, that the scene ought to be continued through the play, in the same place where it was laid in the beginning: for, the stage on which it is represented being but one and the same place, it is unnatural to conceive it many,—and those far distant to from one another. I will not deny but, by the variation of painted scenes, the fancy, which in these cases will contribute to its own deceit, may sometimes imagine it several places, with some appearance of probability; yet it still carries the greater likelihood 15 of truth, if those places be supposed so near each other, as in the same town or city; which may all be comprehended under the larger denomination of one place; for a greater distance will bear no proportion to the shortness of time which is allotted, in the 20 acting, to pass from one of them to another; for the observation of this, next to the ancients, the French are to be most commended. They tie themselves so strictly to the unity of place, that you never see in any of their plays, a scene changed in the middle of 25 an act if the act begins in a garden, a street, or

chamber, 'tis ended in the same place; and that you may know it to be the same, the stage is so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all the time: he who enters second', has business with him who was 30 on before; and before the second quits the stage, a third appears who has business with him. This 1 you behold him not, A. 2 that enters the second, A.

Corneille1 calls la liaison des scenes", the continuity or joining of the scenes; and 'tis a good mark of a wellcontrived play, when all the persons are known to each other, and every one of them has some affairs with all the rest.

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(3) 'As for the third unity, which is that of Action, the ancients meant no other by it than what the logicians do by their finis, the end or scope of any action; that which is the first in intention, and last in execution : now the poet is to aim at one great and complete 10 action, to the carrying on of which all things in his play, even the very obstacles, are to be subservient; and the reason of this is as evident as any of the former. For two actions, equally laboured and driven on by the writer, would destroy the unity of the poem; 15 it would be no longer one play, but two: not but that there may be many actions in a play, as Ben Johnson has observed in his Discoveries"; but they must be all subservient to the great one, which our language happily expresses in the name of under-plots: such as 20 in Terence's Eunuch is the difference and reconcilement of Thais and Phædria, which is not the chief business of the play, but promotes the marriage of Chærea and Chremes's sister, principally intended by the poet. There ought to be but one action, says 25 Corneille ", that is, one complete action, which leaves the mind of the audience in a full repose; but this cannot be brought to pass but by many other imperfect actions, which conduce to it, and hold the audience in a delightful suspence of what will be. 'If by these rules (to omit many other drawn from 1 Corneil, A.

30

5

the precepts and practice of the ancients) we should judge our modern plays, 'tis probable that few of them would endure the trial: that which should be the business of a day, takes up in some of them an age; instead of one action, they are the epitomes of a man's life; and for one spot of ground, which the stage should represent, we are sometimes in more countries than the map can shew us.

3

'But if we allow the Ancients to have contrived Io well, we must acknowledge them to have written1 better. Questionless we are deprived of a great stock of wit in the loss of Menander among the Greek poets, and of Cæcilius, Afranius, and Varius, among the Romans; we may guess at Menander's excellency 15 by the plays of Terence, who translated some of his 2; and yet wanted so much of him, that he was called by C. Cæsar the half-Menander"; and may judge of Varius", by the testimonies of Horace, Martial, and Velleius Paterculus. 'Tis probable that these, could 20 they be recovered, would decide the controversy; but so long as Aristophanes and Plautus are extant, while the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca, are in our hands, I can never see one of those plays which are now written, but it increases 25 my admiration of the ancients. And yet I must acknowledge further, that to admire them as we ought, we should understand them better than we do. Doubtless many things appear flat to us, the wit of which depended on some custom or story, which never came

1 writ, A.

2

4

so A; B has 'them.' 3 A om. may judge. * Aristophanes in the old Comedy and Plautus in the new, A. 5 are to be had, A.

whose wit, A.

to our knowledge; or perhaps on some criticism in their language, which being so long dead, and only remaining in their books, 'tis not possible they should make us understand1 perfectly. To read Macrobius,n explaining the propriety and elegancy of many words 5 in Virgil, which I had before passed over without consideration as common things, is enough to assure me that I ought to think the same of Terence; and that in the purity of his style (which Tully so much valued that he ever carried his works about him) there 10 is yet left in him great room for admiration, if I knew but where to place it. In the mean time I must desire you to take notice, that the greatest man of the last age, Ben Johnson, was willing to give place to them in all things: he was not only a professed imitator of 15 Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track him every where in their snow: if Horace, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca, and Juvenal, had their own from him, there are few serious thoughts which are new in him: you will pardon me, therefore, if I 20 presume he loved their fashion, when he wore their cloaths. But since I have otherwise a great veneration for him, and you, Eugenius, prefer him above all other poets,* I will use no farther argument to you than his example: I will produce before you Father 25 Ben, dressed in all the ornaments and colours of the ancients; you will need no other guide to our party, if you follow him; and whether you consider the bad

*See a high eulogy on Ben Jonson, by Lord Buckhurst (the Eugenius of this piece), written about the year 1668. Dryden's MISCEL. v. 123, edit. 1716 (Malone).

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plays of our age, or regard the good plays' of the

last, both the best and worst of the modern poets will

equally instruct you to admire the ancients.'

Crites had no sooner left speaking, but Eugenius,

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5 who had waited with some impatience for it, thus began:

'I have observed in your speech, that the former part of it is convincing as to what the moderns have profited by the rules of the ancients; but in the latter 10 you are careful to conceal how much they have excelled them; we own all the helps we have from them, and want neither veneration nor gratitude, while we acknowledge that, to overcome them, we must make use of the advantages we have received from them: 15 but to these assistances we have joined our own industry; for, had we sat down with a dull imitation of them, we might then have lost somewhat of the old perfection, but never acquired any that was new. We draw not therefore after their lines, but those of nature; 20 and having the life before us, besides the experience of all they knew, it is no wonder if we hit some airs and features which they have missed. I deny not what you urge of arts and sciences, that they have flourished in some ages more than others; but your 25 instance in philosophy makes for me: for if natural causes be more known now than in the time of Aristotle, because more studied, it follows that poesy and other arts may, with the same pains, arrive still nearer to perfection; and, that granted, it will rest 30 for you to prove that they wrought more perfect images of human life than we; which seeing in 9 A om. had.

1 good ones, A.

2

esteem, A.