öufly maintained, be fometimes imputed to the fpeakers. Hence the found philofophy of the chorus will be conftantly wanting, to rectify the wrong conclufions of the audience, and prevent the ill impreffions that might otherwife be made upon it. Nor let any one fay, that the audience is well able to do this for itself: Euripides did not find even an Athenian theatre fo quickfighted. The story is well known, [Sen. Ep. 115.] that when this painter of the manners was obliged, by the rules of his art, and the character to be fuftained, to put a run of bold fentiments in the mouth of one of his perfons, the people inftantly took fire, charging the poet with the imputed villainy, as though it had been his own. Now if fuch an audience could so easily mifinterpret an attention to the truth of character into the real doctrine of the poet, and this too, when a chorus was at hand to correct and difabuse their judgments, what must be the cafe, when the whole is left to the fagacity and penetration of the people? The wiser fort, it is true, have little need of this information. Yet the reflexions of fober fenfe on the course and occurrences of the reprefentation, clothed in the nobleft dress of poetry, and enforced by the joint powers of harmony and action (which is the true character of the chorus) might make it, even to fuch, a no unpleafant or unprofitable entertain

ment.

But these two are a small part of the uses of the chorus; which in every light is feen fo important to the truth, decorum, and dignity of the tragic fcene, that the modern stage, which hath not thought proper to adopt it, is even, with the advantage of, fometimes, the jufteft moral painting and sublimeft imagery, but a very faint fhadow of the old; as muft needs appear to those who have looked into the ancient models, or, divefting themselves of modern prejudices, are difposed to confult the dictates of plain fenfe. For the use of fuch, I once defigned to have drawn into one view the feveral important benefits arifing to the drama from the observance of this rule, but have the pleasure to find myself prevented by a fenfible differtation of a good French writer, which the reader will find in the VIII tom. of the Hiftory of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres.-Or, it may be fufficient to refer the English reader to the late tragedies of ELFRIDA and CARACTACUS; which do honour to modern poetry, and are a better apology, than any I could make, for the ancient chorus.

193. OFFICIUMQUE VIRILE.] Heinfius takes virile adverbially for viriliter. But this is thought harfh. What hinders, but that it may be taken adjectively? And then, agreeably to his

interpre

interpretation, officium virile will mean a ftrenu ous, diligent office, fuch as becomes a perfon interested in the progrefs of the action. The precept is levelled against the practice of those poets, who, though they allot the part of a perfona dramatis to the chorus, yet for the most part make it so idle and infignificant an one, as is of little confequence in the representation : by which means the advantage of probability, in tended to be drawn from this ufe of the chorus, is, in great measure, loft,

194. Νευ QUID MEDIOS INTERCINAT ACTUS, QUOD NON PROPOSITO, CONDUCAT ET HAEREAT APTE.] How neceffary this advice might be to the writers of the Auguftan age cannot certainly appear; but, if the practice of Seneca may give room for any fufpicion, it should seem to have been much wanted; in whom I fcarcely believe there is one fingle inftance of the chorus being employed in a manner confonant to its true end and character. To fupport this general cenfure, which may feem to bear hard on the poet, let us examine, in this view, one of the best of his plays, I mean, the Hippolytus; whofe chorus, throughout, bears a very idle and uninteresting part-hath no share in the action-and fings impertinently.

At the end of the first act, when Phædra had avowed her paffion for Hippolytus, inftead of declaiming against her horrid purpose, enlarging on the danger and impiety of giving way to unnatural lufts, or fomething. of this nature, which was furely the office of the chorus, it expatiates wantonly, and with a poetic luxuriance, on the fovereign, wide-extended powers of love.

In the clofe of the fecond act, instead of applauding the virtuous obftinacy of Hippolytus, and execrating the mad attempt of Phædra, it coolly fings the danger of beauty.

The third act contains the falfe accufation of Hippolytus, and the too easy deception of Thefeus. What had the chorus to do here, but to warn against a too great credulity, and to commiferate the cafe of the deluded father? Yet it declaims in general, on the unequal distribution of good and ill.

After the fourth act, the chorus should naturally have bewailed the fate of Hippolytus, and reverenced the mysterious conduct of providence in fuffering the cruel deftiny of the innocent. This, or fomething like it, would have been to the purpose. But, as if the poet had never heard of this rule of coherence, he harangues, in defiance of common fenfe, on the inflability of an high fortune, and the fecurity of a low.

It will further juftify this cenfure of Seneca, and be fome amusement to the critical reader, to obferve, how the feveral blunders, here charged upon him, arose from an injudicious imitation of Euripides.

I. There are two places in the Greek Hippolytus, which Seneca feems to have had in view in his firft chorus. We will confider them both.

1. When the unhappy Phædra at length fuffers the fatal secret of her paffion to be extorted from her, fhe falls, as was natural, into all the horrors of self-deteftation, and determines not to furvive the confeffion of fo black a crime, In this conjuncture, the nutrix, who is not drawn, as in modern tragedy, an unmeaning confident, the mere depofitary of the poet's fecrets, but has real manners affigned to her, endeavours, with the highest beauty of character, to divert thefe horrid intentions, and mitigate, in fome fort, the guilt of her paffion, by representing to her the refiftless and all-fubduing force of love. "Venus," fays this virtuous monitrix, "is not to be withftood, when she "rushes upon us with all her power. Nor is 66 any part of creation vacant from her influShe pervades the air, and glides through the deeps. We, the inhabitants of the earth, are all fubject to her dominion, Nay, afk of

ence.