Not content to introduce dancing as an essential part of the composition, they even attempt to make it the principal, having operas, which they call ballets, and which so badly answer their title, that dancing is no less out of character in them than in all the rest. Most of these ballets consist of as many different subjects as acts; which subjects are connected together by certain meta- physical relations, of which the spectator would never form the least suspicion or conjecture, if the author did not take care to advise him of it in the prologue. The seasons, ages, senses, elements, are the subjects of a dance; but I should be glad to know what propriety there is in all this, or what ideas can by this means be conveyed to the mind of the spectator? some of them again are purely allegorical, as the _carnival_, the _folly_, and are the most intolerable of all, because with a good deal of wit and finesse, they contain neither sentiment, description, plot, business, nor any thing that can either interest the audience, set off the music to advantage, flatter the passions, or heighten the illusion. In these pretended ballets the action of the piece is performed in singing, the dancers continually finding occasion to break in upon the singers, tho’ without meaning or design. The result of all this, however, is, that these ballets, being less interesting than their tragedies, their interruptions are little remarked. Were the piece itself more affecting, the spectator would be more offended; but the one defect serves to hide the other, and, in order to prevent the spectators being tired with the dancing, the authors artfully contrive it so that they may be more heartily tired with the piece itself.