E 34 ] 



perhaps, be confidered as one of their peculiarities. In this they 

 even feem to furpafs the earlier produdions of the Englijh Drama. 

 There is not a play of Schiller s which would not, if it were to be 

 a£led as it is printed, take up at leaft five or fix hours in the re- 

 prefentation, without allowing a reafonable breathing-time be- 

 tween the ads. This intolerable prolixity arifes from want of 

 care in the writers, to mature and digeft their plans, and revife 

 and corred their produdlions. Thus, the fable is embarraflfed with 

 a number of unneceflary and epifodical incidents, by which the 

 attention is diftraded, and the intereft is weakened and diluted by 

 the introdudion of a rabble of unmeaning, infipid, and idle per- 

 fonages ; while the dialogue is overloaded, and the progrefs of the 

 adion fufpended, by infipid love eclogues, incoherent rhapfodies of 

 unnatural far-fetched fentiment, or vapid diflTertations, in the ftyle 

 of the new philofophy. 



Another peculiarity is a device, which, in a great meafure, has 

 originated with the ftage of Germany, and from it been adopted by 

 their Englifli imitators ; I mean the immoderate ufe of Italics and 

 marginal diredions ; in fad, the writer of a modern Drama, along 

 with the dialogue and words of his play, ufually compofes and 

 commits to print a regular Pantomime to match it. This pofition 

 may require fome explanation. The German School, ambitious of 

 obtaining eclat, and profeffing particularly, to difplay feeling, and 

 exhibit paflion, yet, unable, or unwilling, to make the exertions in 



com pofition 



