representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently,
there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to
an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has
been the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must
first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And
here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical
decision;--the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect
delusion is to be aimed at,--an opinion which needs no fresh
confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr.
Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective
knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he
makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have
before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to
illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state,
when dreaming. In both cases we simply do not judge the imagery to be
unreal; there is a negative reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore,
tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed,
gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality
for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is dramatically improbable.

Now the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend
on the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many
things would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not
at all interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the
narrow cockpit may be made to hold

The vasty field of France, or we may cram
Within its wooden O, the very casques,
That did affright the air at Agincourt.