Volume Ii Part 41 (1/2)

[Footnote 7: with great Art]

[Footnote 8: the Story]

[Footnote 9: _Poetics_, V. -- 3. In arguing the superiority of Tragic to Epic Poetry, Aristotle says,

there is less Unity in all Epic imitation; as appears from this--that any Epic Poem will furnish matter for several Tragedies ... The _Iliad_, for example, and the _Odyssey_, contain many such subordinate parts, each of which has a certain Magnitude and Unity of its own; yet is the construction of those Poems as perfect, and as nearly approaching to the imitation of a single action, as possible.]

[Footnote 10: labours also]

[Footnote 11: Circ.u.mstances]

[Footnote 12: Simplicity.]

[Footnote 13: Dryden's _Spanish Friar_ has been praised also by Johnson for the happy coincidence and coalition of the tragic and comic plots, and Sir Walter Scott said of it, in his edition of Dryden's Works, that

the felicity does not consist in the ingenuity of his original conception, but in the minutely artificial strokes by which the reader is perpetually reminded of the dependence of the one part of the Play on the other. These are so frequent, and appear so very natural, that the comic plot, instead of diverting our attention from the tragic business, recalls it to our mind by constant and unaffected allusion.

No great event happens in the higher region of the camp or court that has not some indirect influence upon the intrigues of Lorenzo and Elvira; and the part which the gallant is called upon to act in the revolution that winds up the tragic interest, while it is highly in character, serves to bring the catastrophe of both parts of the play under the eye of the spectator, at one and the same time.]

[Footnote 14: Method]

[Footnote 15: _aeneid_, Bk. VII. 11. 378-384, thus translated by Dryden:

_And as young striplings whip the top for sport, On the smooth pavement of an empty court, The wooden engine files and whirls about, Admir'd, with clamours, of the beardless rout; They lash aloud, each other they provoke, And lend their little souls at every stroke: Thus fares the Queen, and thus her fury blows Amidst the crowds, and trundles as she goes._]

[Footnote 16: [nature]]

[Footnote 17: [offence to]]

[Footnote 18: _Poetics_, II. section 4, where it is said of the magnitude of Tragedy.]

[Footnote 19: Intervention]

No. 268. Monday, January 7, 1712. Steele.

--Minus aptus acutis Naribus Horum Hominum.