I shall here add a Remark, which I am afraid our Tragick Writers may make an ill use of. As our Heroes are generally Lovers, their Swelling and Blustring upon the Stage very much recommends them to the fair Part of their Audience. The Ladies are wonderfully pleased to see a Man insulting Kings, or affronting the Gods, in one Scene, and throwing himself at the Feet of his Mistress in another. Let him behave himself insolently towards the Men, and abjectly towards the Fair One, and it is ten to one but he proves a Favourite of the Boxes. _Dryden_ and _Lee_, in several of their Tragedies, have practised this Secret with good Success. But to shew how a Rant pleases beyond the most just and natural Thought that is not pronounced with Vehemence, I would desire the Reader when he sees the Tragedy of _OEdipus_, to observe how quietly the Hero is dismissed at the End of the third Act, after having pronounced the following Lines, in which the Thought is very natural, and apt to move Compassion; 'To you, good Gods, I make my last Appeal; Or clear my Virtues, or my Crimes reveal. If in the Maze of Fate I blindly run, And backward trod those Paths I sought to shun; Impute my Errors to your own Decree: My Hands are guilty, but my Heart is free.' Let us then observe with what Thunder-claps of Applause he leaves the Stage, after the Impieties and Execrations at the End of the fourth Act; [4] and you will wonder to see an Audience so cursed and so pleased at the same time; 'O that as oft have at Athens seen,-- [Where, by the Way, there was no Stage till many Years after OEdipus.] ... The Stage arise, and the big Clouds descend; So now, in very Deed, I might behold This pond'rous Globe, and all yen marble Roof, Meet like the Hands of Jove, and crush Mankind. For all the Elements, &c.' [Footnote 1: Here Aristotle is not quite accurately quoted. What he says of the tragedies which end unhappily is, that Euripides was right in preferring them, 'and as the strongest proof of it we find that upon the stage, and in the dramatic contests, such tragedies, if they succeed, have always the most tragic effect.' Poetics, Part II. § 12.] [Footnote 2: Of the two plays in this list, besides 'Othello', which have not been mentioned in the preceding notes, 'All for Love', produced in 1678, was Dryden's 'Antony and Cleopatra', 'Oroonoko', first acted in, 1678, was a tragedy by Thomas Southerne, which included comic scenes. Southerne, who held a commission in the army, was living in the 'Spectator's' time, and died in 1746, aged 86. It was in his best play, 'Isabella', or the Fatal Marriage, that Mrs. Siddons, in 1782, made her first appearance on the London stage.] [Footnote 3: Congreve's 'Mourning Bride' was first acted in 1697; Rowe's 'Tamerlane' (with a hero planned in complement to William III.) in 1702; Rowe's 'Ulysses' in 1706; Edmund Smith's 'Phaedra' and 'Hippolitus' in 1707.]