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tive, they excite the laugh of scorn instead of the frown of indignation; and receive, from the insignificance of their effects, the ludicrous character of folly, instead of the serious one of wickedness.

14. Like all qualities, however, which are vicious only in their excess, and meritorious in their moderation, it is impossible to express or represent them so, as that the characters exhibited may not be liable to be misunderstood or misapplied: for as the boundaries between the vicious excess and the virtuous moderation cannot be fixed by any geometrical admeasurement, or mathematical calculation, every individual fixes them according to his particular disposition, interest, or circumstances. That degree of fear, which, to the soldier or the seaman, may appear unmanly timidity, may, to the merchant or mechanic, seem only necessary caution; and that degree of parsimony, which the old and wary may think only laudable frugality, may, to the young and dissipated, appear the meanest penury: whence every rake or spendthrift, when he sees the comedy of the Miser, will be apt to apply the character of Harpagon to the father or guardian, by whose prudence he is restrained from ruining himself and his family; and conclude that it is equally meritorious to rob or defraud him. But would he not have made a similar application

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Of the Ridi culous.

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Of the Ridi

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of what he saw in real life, and drawn a similar conclusion, if he had never seen the play? I think it is evident that he would; for comedy is a fictitious imitation of the examples of real life, and not an example, from which real life is ever copied. No one ever goes to the theatre to learn how he is to act on a particular emergency; or to hear the solution of any general question of casuistical morality, that may have arisen in his mind; but merely to sympathize with the general energies, or laugh at the particular weaknesses of human nature: which, in the fictions of theatrical representation, he can do without the intermixture of any of those painful or humiliating sentiments, which would occur in contemplating them, as they arise from similar events in real life.

15. As exhibiting the particular weaknesses and follies of the human mind, the fictions of comedy, and the characters which it employs, must deviate from the common system, which common prudence marks out for the conduct of domestic life, equally with those of tragedy, which displays its general energies. The usual subject and principal action of all comedy is love, and its termination marriage: but if this union were to be, as it commonly is, or at least ought to be in real life, the slow result of calm and tried attachment-of deliberate and sober. preference, sanctified by virtue and directed by

prudence, how flat, tame, and insipid would be

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culous.

the progress of it; and how impossible for any of the Ridipowers of genius to make the representation of such scenes interesting or amusing! To produce this effect, there must be difficulties and embarrassments, obstacles and restrictions; which are to be eluded by intrigue, controlled by impudence, or surmounted by audacity. The credulity of the simple is to be duped and exposed by the artifice of the crafty; or the circumspection of the wary baffled and frustrated by the enterprise of the bold; so that the various peculiarities of manners, dispositions, and affections may be displayed in a variety of situations, and under the influence of a variety of circumstances, to amuse the fancies, and awaken the sympathies of the spectators.

16. These difficulties and embarrassments, obstacles and restrictions, of course, arise from guardians or parents; whose prudence or avarice, vanity or ambition, thwart the more disinterested inclinations of their wards and children. They are consequently the persons whose credulity is to be duped, whose circumspection is to be eluded, and whose characters are to be exposed to the scorn and ridicule of the spectators. Even where the plot of the piece does not admit of such characters; that scorn and ridicule are often pointed against the simple and inoffensive-the weak and well

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Of the Ridiculous.

meaning; who are cheated by the crafty, insulted by the insolent, and triumphed over by all.

17. Comedy therefore, considered as holding out examples for real life, is necessarily still more immoral in its tendency than tragedy; since the characters and incidents, which it exhibits, are those which occur in the ordinary ranks of civil society, and which it is therefore in every one's power to imitate. The crimes of King Richard, or Macbeth, are within the reach of few; but the vices of Charles Surface, and the indiscretions of Tom Jones, are within the reach of every gentleman: nevertheless, I do not believe that such vices, and such indiscretions, would have been less frequent, if those popular instances of them had never been exhibited to the public: for the high spirits of the gay and voluptuous think as little of the examples held out in plays and romances, when plunging into riot and intemperance, as the aspiring minds of the ambitious do, when planning designs of treason and usurpation. A coxcomical highwayman may, indeed, affect to imitate the character of Macheath; but this imitation commences after he becomes a highwayman, which he would equally have been, had the Beggar's Opera never existed. Men are driven to such courses by the urgent pressure of want, brought on, perhaps, by the

thoughtless indulgences of vice and extravagance but no person, in his senses, was ever led into enterprises of such dangerous importance by the romantic desire of imitating the fictions of a drama. If the conduct of any persons is influenced by the examples exhibited in such fictions, it is that of young ladies in the affairs of love and marriage: but I believe that such influence is much more rare, than severe moralists are inclined to suppose; since there were plenty of elopements, and stolen matches, before comedies, or plays of any kind, were known" viderunt primos argentea secula machos."-If, however, there are any romantic minds, which feel this influence, they may draw an awful lesson concerning its consequences from the same source; namely, that the same kind of marriage, which usually ends a comedy, as usually begins a tragedy.

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Of the Ridi

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