more creeping than their flights of love. Yet the line of metaphysical gallantry which they exhibited had its date, and a long one, both in France and England. They remained the favourite amusement of Louis XIVth's court, although assailed by the satire of Boileau. In England they continued to be read by our grandmothers during the Augustan age of English, and while Addison was amusing the world with his wit, and Pope by his poetry, the ladies were reading Cleiia, Cleopatra, and the Grand Cyrus. The fashion did not decay till about the reign of George I.; and even more lately, Mrs Lennox, patronized by Dr Johnson, wrote a very good imitation of Cervantes, entitled, The Female Quixote, which had those works for its basis. They are now totally forgotten. The Modern Romance, so ennobled by the productions of so many master hands, would require a long disquisition. But we can here only name that style of composition in which De Foe rendered fiction more impressive than truth itself, and Swift could render plausible even the grossest impossibilities. * * There was the less occasion to continue and complete this Essay, as the author has, in the lives of the British Novelists, expressed the opinions he entertains upon the subject of Modern Romance, and its connexion with the elder fictions by which it was preceded. ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. A DRAMA (we adopt Dr Johnson's definition, with some little extension) is a poem of fictitious composition in dialogue, in which the action is not related but represented. A disposition to this fascinating amusement, considered in its rudest state, seems to be inherent in human nature. It is the earliest sport of children to take upon themselves some fictitious character, and sustain it to the best of their skill, by such appropriate gestures and language, as their youthful fancies suggest, and such dress and decoration as circumstances place within their reach. The infancy of nations is as prone to this pastime as that of individuals. When the horde emerges out of a nearly brutal state, so far as to have holidays, public sports, and general rejoicings, the pageant of their imaginary deities, or of their fabulous ances tors, is usually introduced as the most pleasing and interesting part of the show. But however general the predisposition to the assumption of fictitious character may be, there is an immeasurable distance betwixt the rude games in which it first displays itself, and that polished amusement which is numbered among the fine arts, which poetry, music, and painting, have vied to adorn; to whose service genius has devoted her most sublime efforts; while philosophy has stooped from her loftier task, to regulate the progress of the action, and give probability to the representation and personification of the scene. The history of Greece-of that wonderful country, whose days of glory have left such a never-dying blaze of radiance behind them-the history of Greece affords us the means of correctly tracing the polished and regulated Drama, the subject of severe rule, and the vehicle for expressing the noblest poetry, from amusements as rude in their outline, as the mimic sports of children or of savages. The history of the Grecian stage is that of the dramatic art in general. They transferred the Drama, with their other literature, to the victorious Romans, with whom it rather existed as a foreign than flourished as a native art. Like the other fine arts, the stage sunk under the decay of the empire, and its fall was |