What epic poetry is to romance or biography, THE DRAMA is to epic poetry. As the former selects from the romance of history its most interesting and momentous events, and makes them the subject of brilliant description, of impassioned rhetoric, so the latter chooses from the former its most heart-stirring episodes, and brings them in actual dialogue and representation before the mind of the spectator. Immense is the effect of this concentration--still more marvellous that of the personation with which it is attended. Imagination assumes the actual form of beings; conception is realised. The airy visions of the past are clothed in flesh and blood. The marvels of acting, scenery, and stage effect, come to add to the pathos of incident, to multiply tenfold the charms of poetry. It is impossible to conceive intellectual enjoyment carried beyond the point it attained, when the magic of Shakspeare's thought and language was enhanced by the power of Siddons or Kemble's acting, or is personified by the witchery of Helen Faucit's conceptions. But for the full effect of this combination, it is indispensable that the principles of dramatic composition be duly observed, and the stage kept within its due limits, more contracted in point of time and place than either romance or epic poetry. Within those bounds it is omnipotent, and produces an impression to which, while it lasts, none of the sister arts can pretend. Beyond them it never fails to break down, and not only ceases to interest, but often becomes to the last degree wearisome and exhausting. It is not difficult to see to what this general failure of the drama, when it outstrips its proper bounds, is owing. It arises from the impossibility of awakening interest without attending to unity of emotion; of keeping alive attention without continuity of incident; of making the story intelligible without simplicity of action. Dramatic authors, actors, and actresses, how gifted soever in other respects, are the worst possible judges on this subject. They are so familiar with the story, from having composed the piece themselves, or made it the subject of frequent repetition or rehearsal, that they can form no conception of the difficulty which nine tenths of the audience, to whom the piece is entirely strange, experience in understanding the plot, or acquiring any interest in the incidents or development of the piece. It may safely be affirmed, that a vast majority of the spectators of the dramas now habitually represented, with the exception of a few of Shakspeare's, which have become as household words on the English stage, never understand any thing of the story till the end of the third act, and are only beginning to take an interest in the piece when the curtain falls. Dramatic authors and performers would do well to ponder on this observation; they may rely upon it that it furnishes the key to the present degraded state of the English drama.