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The feature which will firft draw the attention of every 

 reader of the German Tragedy and Romance, is a fombre gloom, 

 a love of terror, an affedation of the horrible. Terror and 

 pity are two of the moft powerful emotions of the mind; 

 and to excite them is the great objed of tragedy, and of the 

 tragic parts of the epos; but the attempt to out-herod Herod, 

 to out-butcher butchery, and thus, by raifing terror and pity in 

 excefs, to be fomething more than pathetic, will ever defeat its 

 own ends, and, in fa6l, feldom fails of producing ridicule. " Ne 

 " quid nimii" \s a maxim not lefs applicable to good writing, 

 than to good conduit in the affairs of life. The fiomach throws 

 off over-large dofes of any medicaments, and thus the mofl potent 

 drugs and even mortal poifons may become inoperative. No- 

 thing can be highly affedting, which is not, at the fame time, highly 

 probable; for it is the attribute of probability that brings the 

 feigfied adtion home to men's bufinejs and kofoms. Thofe writers, 

 who feek to terrify or melt, in a fuperlalive degree, ouiftep the 

 raodefty of nature, and wander out of the bounds of probability. 

 This love of exhibiting the gloomy and horrible, may be compared 

 to excefs of Chiaro ofcuro in painting.* I know that fome unre- 

 fledting readers are difpofed to give implicit credit to the love of 

 horrors and the afFedlation of the wild and dreadful, as concomi- 

 tants of flrong fancy and original genius : To fuch I would re- 

 comijiend the perufal of Stncca the tragedian, and of fome of the 



earlier 



* I fhould not be furprifed to fee the executions of Ravaillac introduced on the 

 ftage by the Germans. Dry den's Amboyna is in their tafle. 



