Anna; when they are personified in the son of a knavish steward, or the daughter of a foolish baronet; when they are petticoated, booted and spurred; when they are mounted on horse-back, or seat themselves in a post-chaise, or walk arm in arm through the streets of London, or Paris,—the naked form of truth vanishes under all this pitiful drapery, and the mind is distracted with mean and contradictory appearances which it knows not how to reconcile. When familiarised to us by being brought on the real stage of life, and ascribed to any supposed characters, perfect virtue becomes little better than a cheat, and the pretension to superior wisdom, looks like affectation, conceit, and pedantry. This effect must in some measure take place, even though the most perfect consistency and propriety were preserved: how much more then when the mind eagerly catches hold of every little flaw, to prove that the whole is a piece of acting, and to revert to its habitual feelings of nature and probability?—It is not difficult to personify the passions, so as to render them natural: that is a language which men readily understand. But of the difficulty of exhibiting the passions entirely under the control of reason, of virtue, religion, or any other abstract principle, let those judge who have studied the romances of Richardson. To have made Clarissa a natural character with all her studied attention to prudence, propriety, etc. is the greatest proof of his genius: yet even she is not free from affectation. In Sir Charles Grandison, he has completely failed: he has exhibited him either as an automaton, a puppet, or a self-complacent coxcomb, ‘ugly all over with affectation,’ whose own perfection, propriety of conduct, and fine qualities, are never for a moment out of his sight. Rousseau’s Julia, again, is something of a pedant, and cold, calculating, and insincere. I mention these instances to shew, that though I do not think Mr Holcroft has rendered his hero and heroine so attractive as he himself probably thought they might be made, yet it was not for want of genius, but from the impossibility of the undertaking. Frank Henley, though a much nobler-minded being than Sir Charles Grandison, yet stands in general in the same predicament. We admire his actions, but we do not love the man: his motives we respect, but with his feelings we have little sympathy. Indeed he is a character who does not stand in need of our sympathy; ‘A reasoning, self-sufficient thing, an intellectual all in all.’ He is himself a being without passions; and in order to feel with him, we must ourselves be divested of passion. I have made these remarks to shew the difficulty of embodying a philosophic character in a dramatic form.