But beside the outlines of the posture, the design of the picture comprehends, in the next place, the forms of faces, which are to be different; and so in a poem or a play must the several characters of the persons be distinguished from each other. I knew a poet, whom out of respect I will not name, who, being too witty himself, could draw nothing but wits in a comedy of his; even his fools were infected with the disease of their author. They overflowed with smart repartees, and were only distinguished from the intended wits by being called coxcombs,[129] though they deserved not so scandalous a name. Another, who had a great genius for tragedy,[130] following the fury of his natural temper, made every man, and woman too, in his plays, stark raging mad; there was not a sober person to be had for love or money. All was tempestuous and blustering; heaven and earth were coming together at every word; a mere hurricane from the beginning to the end,—and every actor seemed to be hastening on the day of judgment.[131] “Let every member be made for its own head,” says our author; not a withered hand to a young face. So, in the persons of a play, whatsoever is said or done by any of them, must be consistent with the manners which the poet has given them distinctly; and even the habits must be proper to the degrees and humours of the persons, as well as in a picture. He who entered in the first act a young man, like Pericles, Prince of Tyre,[132] must not be in danger in the fifth act, of committing incest with his daughter; nor an usurer, without great probability and causes of repentance, be turned into a _cutting_ Morecraft.[133] I am not satisfied, that the comparison betwixt the two arts in the last paragraph is altogether so just as it might have been; but I am sure of this which follows: “The principal figure of the subject must appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to distinguish it from the rest, which are only its attendants.” Thus, in a tragedy, or an epic poem, the hero of the piece must be advanced foremost to the view of the reader, or spectator: he must outshine the rest of all the characters; he must appear the prince of them, like the sun in the Copernican system, encompassed with the less noble planets: because the hero is the centre of the main action; all the lines from the circumference tend to him alone: he is the chief object of pity in the drama, and of admiration in the epic poem.