being soon wearied. The great bulk of mankind merely from their situation
in life, or from their incapacity for extraordinary exertions, are
confined within a narrow circle of insignificant operations. Their days
flow on in succession under the sleepy rule of custom, their life advances
by an insensible progress, and the bursting torrent of the first passions
of youth soon settles into a stagnant marsh. From the discontent which
this occasions they are compelled to have recourse to all sorts of
diversions, which uniformly consist in a species of occupation that may be
renounced at pleasure, and though a struggle with difficulties, yet with
difficulties that are easily surmounted. But of all diversions the theatre
is undoubtedly the most entertaining. Here we may see others act even when
we cannot act to any great purpose ourselves. The highest object of human
activity is man, and in the drama we see men, measuring their powers with
each other, as intellectual and moral beings, either as friends or foes,
influencing each other by their opinions, sentiments, and passions, and
decisively determining their reciprocal relations and circumstances. The
art of the poet accordingly consists in separating from the fable whatever
does not essentially belong to it, whatever, in the daily necessities of
real life, and the petty occupations to which they give rise, interrupts
the progress of important actions, and concentrating within a narrow space
a number of events calculated to attract the minds of the hearers and to
fill them with attention and expectation. In this manner he gives us a
renovated picture of life; a compendium of whatever is moving and
progressive in human existence.

But this is not all. Even in a lively oral narration, it is not unusual to
introduce persons in conversation with each other, and to give a
corresponding variety to the tone and the expression. But the gaps, which
these conversations leave in the story, the narrator fills up in his own
name with a description of the accompanying circumstances, and other