and beauty were aimed at. The poetical conception required a certain
degree of repose in the action, and the keeping together certain masses,
so as to exhibit a succession of _statuesque_ situations, and it is
not improbable that the player remained for some time motionless in one
attitude. But we are not to suppose from this, that the Greeks were
contented with a cold and feeble representation of the passions. How could
we reconcile such a supposition with the fact, that whole lines of their
tragedies are frequently dedicated to inarticulate exclamations of pain,
with which we have nothing to correspond in any of our modern languages?

It has been often conjectured that the delivery of their dialogue
resembled the modern recitative. For such a conjecture there is no other
foundation than the fact that the Greek, like almost all southern
languages, was pronounced with a greater musical inflexion than ours of
the North. In other respects their tragic declamation must, I conceive,
have been altogether unlike recitative, being both much more measured, and
also far removed from its studied and artificial modulation.

So, again, the ancient tragedy, because it was accompanied with music and
dancing, [Footnote: Even Barthelemy falls into this error in a note to the
70th Chapter of _Anacharsis_.] has also been frequently compared with
the opera. But this comparison betrays an utter ignorance of the spirit of
classical antiquity. Their dancing and music had nothing but the name in
common with ours. In tragedy the primary object was the poetry, and
everything else was strictly and truly subordinate to it. But in the opera
the poetry is merely an accessory, the means of connecting the different
parts together; and it is almost lost amidst its many and more favoured
accompaniments. The best prescription for the composition of an opera is,
take a rapid poetical sketch and then fill up and colour the outlines by
the other arts. This anarchy of the arts, where music, dancing, and