judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is
so important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may
arise, and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual
delusion, (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up
their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of
their tragedies), or from denying it altogether, (which seems the end of
Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the
very same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged
probable by us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties
in even balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if
they should serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not
only are we never absolutely deluded--or any thing like it, but the
attempt to cause the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses
sitting in a theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds,
which, feeling that they cannot affect the heart or head permanently,
endeavour to call forth the momentary affections. There ought never to
be more pain than is compatible with co-existing pleasure, and to be
amply repaid by thought.

Shakspeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous
character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high
language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;--a greater
assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more
feelings;-the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and
especially this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently
elevated by your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter
conversation of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the
stage, too, was advantageous,--for the drama thence became something
between recitation and a re-presentation; and the absence or paucity of
scenes allowed a freedom from the laws of unity of place and unity of