An English ftomach requires fomething folid and fubftantial, and will rife hungry from a regale of nothing but fweetmeats.

An opera is a kind of ambigu: the table is finely illuminated, adorned with flowers and fruits, and every thing that the feafon affords fragrant or delightful to the eye or the odour; but unless there is fomething too for the appetite, it is odds but the guests break up diffatisfied.

It is incumbent upon the poet alone to provide for that in the choice of his fable, the conduct of his plot, the harmony of his numbers, the elevation of his fentiments, and the juftness of his characters. In this confifts the folid and the fubftantial.

The nature of this entertainment requires the plot to be formed upon fome story in which Enchanters and Magicians have a principal part. In our modern heroic poems they fupply the place of the gods with the Ancients, and make a much more natural appearance by being mortals, with the difference only of being endowed with fupernatural power.

The characters should be great and illuftrious; the figure the actor makes upon the stage is one part of the ornament; by confequence the fentiments must be fuitable to the characters in which love and honour will have the principal share.

The dialogue, which in the French and Italian is fet to notes, and fung, I would have pronounced: if

the numbers are of themselves harmonious, there will be no need of mufic to fet them off: a good verse, well pronounced, is in itself musical; and speech is certainly more natural for difcourfe than singing.

Can any thing be more prepofterous than to behold Cato, Julius Cæfar, and Alexander the Great, ftrutting upon the ftage in the figure of songsters, perfonated by eunuchs?

-The finging, therefore, should be wholly applied to the lyrical part of the entertainment, which, by being freed from a tiresome, unnatural recitative, muft certainly administer more reasonable pleasure.

The feveral parts of the entertainment should be fo fuited to relieve one another as to be tedious in none; and the connexion fhould be fuch, that not one should be able to fubfift without the other: like embroidery, so fixed and wrought into the substance, that no part of the ornament could be removed without tearing the stuff.

To introduce finging and dancing by head and fhoulders, no way relative to the action, does not turn a play into an opera, though that title is now promifcuoufly given to every farce sprinkled here and there with a fong and a dance.

The richest lace, ridiculously fet on, will make but a fool's coat.

I will not take upon me to criticife what has appeared of this kind on the English stage: we have se

veral poems under the name of Dramatic Operas by the best hands; but, in my opinion, the fubjects, for the most part, have been improperly chofen. Mr. Addifon's Rofamond, and Mr. Congreve's Semele, though excellent in their kind, are rather masks than operas.

As I cannot help being concerned for the honour of my country, even in the minutest things, I am for endeavouring to outdo our neighbours in performances of all kinds.

Thus, if the fplendour of the French opera, and the harmony of the Italian, were so skilfully interwoven with the charms of poetry, upon a regular dramatic bottom, as to inftruct as well as delight, to improve the mind, as well as ravifh the fenfe, there can be no doubt but fuch an addition would entitle our English opera to the preference of all others. The third part of the encouragement, of which we have been fo liberal to foreigners for a concert of mufic only, mif called an opera, would more than effect it.

In the confiruction of the following Poem the Author has endeavoured to fet an example to his rules; precepts are beft explained by examples; an abler hand might have executed it better: however, it may ferve for a model to be improved upon, when we grow weary of scenes of low life, and return to a taste of more generous pleasures..

We are reproached by foreigners with fuch.unna

tural irregularities in our dramatic pieces as are fhocking to all other nations; even a Swifs has played the critic upon us, without confidering they are as little approved by the judicious in our own. Aftranger who is ignorant of the language, and incapable of judging of the fentiments, condemns by the eye, and concludes what he hears to be as extravagant as what ~ he fees. When Oedipus breaks his neck out of a balcony, and Jocafta appears in her bed murdering herfelf and her children, inftead of moving terror or compaffion, fuch spectacles only fill the fpectator with horror: no wonder if strangers are fhocked at fuch fights, and conclude us a nation hardly yet civilized, that can feem to delight in them. To remove this reproach, it is much to be wished our fcenes were lefs bloody, and the fword and dagger more out of fafhion. To make fome amends for this exclufion, I would be lefs fevere as to the rigour of fome other laws enacted by the masters, though it is always advifable to keep as close to them as poffible: but reformations are not to be brought about all at once.

It may happen that the nature of certain fubjects proper for moving the paffions may require a little more latitude, and then, without offence to the critics, fure there may be room for a faving in equity from the severity of the common law of Parnaffus as well as of the King's Bench. To facrifice a principal beauty, upon which the fuccefs of the whole may de

pend, is being too ftrictly tied down; in fuch a cafe fummum jus may be fumma injuria.

Corneille himself complains of finding his genius often cramped by his own rules: "There is infinite "difference," fays he, "between fpeculation and "practice: let the fevereft critic make the trial, he ❝ will be convinced by his own experience, that upon "certain occafions too strict an adherence to the let"ter of the law fhall exclude a bright opportunity of "fhining, or touching the paffions. Where the breach "is of little moment, or can be contrived to be as it "were imperceptible in the reprefentation, a gentle "difpenfation might be allowed." To thofe little freedoms he attributes the fuccefs of his Cyd: but the rigid legiflators of the Academy handled him fo roughly for it, that he never durft make the venture again, nor none who have followed him. Thus pinioned, the French Muse must always flutter like a bird with the wings cut, incapable of a lofty flight.

The dialogue of their tragedies is under the fame constraint as the construction: not a difcourfe, but an oration; not speaking, but declaiming; not free, natural, and easy, as converfation fhould be, but precife, fet, formal argumenting, pro and con, like difputants in a school. In writing, like drefs, is it not poffible to be too exact, too starched, and too formal? Pleafing negligence I have feen: who ever faw pleafing formality?.