PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 45 



His plots are carelessly contrived, intricate, or disjointed. His 

 carelessness evinces itself in his frequent use of short explanatory 

 scenes, where such explanations might with moderate ingenuity 

 have been interwoven with the main tissue. 



It will also be allowed, that his plots are weakened by an in- 

 equality of interest, frequently evincing a greater impatience to 

 conclude, than desire to perfect. The most striking events some- 

 times endanger the general effect, owing to the insipidity of what 

 follows them : and we may imagine the actors in some instances 

 to have commenced ere the author had concluded. We find him 

 occasionally soar with increasing energy through the first, second 

 and third acts, when he bursts like a sky-rocket — falls through 

 the fourth act like the sparks, and through the fifth like the stick. 

 If his rapid transitions from country to country be allowable, what 

 shall we say to his voracity in swallowing at once a period of many 

 years ? His extreme brevity in the dispatch of years is singularly 

 contrasted by his prolixity in ordinary matters of a moment ; and 

 his rapid relentings and easy convictions are similarly opposed 

 by some scenes of passionate abuse, as tiresome in their length 

 as they are offensive in their coarseness. Dilation is, in fact, as 

 much our author's fault in some instances, as huddled up brevity 

 is in others. Again, no one can pardon, even under any consi- 

 deration, his perpetual punning, his long plays upon words, and 

 the introduction of silly conceits in passages, otherwise impassioned 

 and affecting. Often have we to lament the debasement of a sub- 

 lime thought by the use of a mean expression ; and too frequently 

 the application of language still less suitable to the characters 

 who are supposed to utter it, than to the character of any mixed 

 audience assembled to hear it. Richard the Third certainly me- 

 rited no very delicate handling: but, as the ladies who abused 

 him were of lofty dignity and blood royal, they should have taken 

 other models than the " Syrens of Billingsgate." 



The great coolness with which a deed of blood is occasionally 

 dispatched admits of no defence : neither can we approve of the 

 very prodigal manner in which he sometimes strews the stage 

 with dead bodies. His cutting and maiming is at times so ex- 

 travagant, that we doubt whether most to greet it with ridicule or 

 disgust. We "sup full of horrors, till direness and alarm, once 

 familiar cannot now fright us." 



In the sameness of some of his contrivances to work out a plot 

 we are left to mfer his carelessness as to the perfection of the more 

 mechanical parts of a play. The expedient of young ladies in 



