considerations excited in him a passion for the advancement of the theatre, to which the great figure it has since made is chiefly owing. Mr. Dryden has acknowledged his admirable talents in this way, and gratefully remembers the pains taken by our poet, to set a work of his in the fairest light possible, and to which, he ingenuously ascribes the success with which it was received. This is the hislory of the life and progress of scenery on our stage; which, without doubt, gives greater life to the entertainment of a play; but as the best purposes may be prostituted, so there is some reason to believe that the excessive fondness for decorations, which now prevails, has hurt the true dramatic taste. Scenes are to be considered as secondary in a play, the means of setting it off with lustre, and ought to engross but little attention; as it is more important to hear what a character speaks, than to observe the place where he stands; but now the case is altered. The scenes in a Harlequin Sorcerer, and other unmeaning pantomimes, unknown to our more elegant and judging fore-fathers, procure crowded houses, while the noblest strokes of Dryden, the delicate touches of Otway and Rowe, the wild majesty of Shakespear, and the heart-felt language of Lee, pass neglected, when put in competition with those gewgaws of the stage, these feasts of the eye; which as they can communicate no ideas, so they can neither warm nor reform the heart, nor answer one moral purpose in nature. We ought not to omit a cirrumstance much in favour of Sir William Davenant, which proves him to have been as good a man as a poet. When at the Restoration, those who had been active in disturbing the late reign, and secluding their sovereign from the throne, became obnoxious to the royal party, Milton was likely to feel the vengeance of the court, Davenant actuated by a noble principle of gratitude, interposed all his influence, and saved the greatest ornament of the world from the stroke of an executioner. Ten years before that, Davenant had been rescued by Milton, and he remembered the favour; an instance, this, that generosity, gratitude, and nobleness of nature is confined to no particular party; but the heart of a good man will still discover itself in acts of munificence and kindness, however mistaken he may be in his opinion, however warm in state factions. The particulars of this extraordinary affair are related in the life of Milton. Sir William Davenant continued at the head of his company of actors, and at last transferred them to a new and magnificent theatre built in Dorset-Gardens, where some of his old plays were revived with very singular circumstances of royal kindness, and a new one when brought upon the stage met with great applause.