circumstances of heresy,) the greater part of them,--the moral instincts
common to all men having been smothered and kept from
development,--would have thought as little of murder. However this may
be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying the people
produced the great distinction between the Greek and the English
theatres;--for to this we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or
a representation of human events more lively, nearer the truth, and
permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample exhibition
of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and
circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by
AEschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;--and at the same time we learn to
account for, and--relatively to the author--perceive the necessity of,
the Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil,
which our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of
the stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without
them. Even to this day in Italy, every opera--(even Metastasio obeyed
the claim throughout)--must have six characters, generally two pairs of
cross lovers, a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants,
themselves lovers;--and when a new opera appears, it is the universal
fashion to ask--which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c.

It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most
corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;--whereas
the other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism,
which is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like
Swedenborgianism,) have no connection with it. The very impersonation of
moral evil under the name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations;
and hence we see that the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or
dialogues and plots of allegorical personages. Again, some character in
real history had become so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance,