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Dramatis Perfona ! little felicitous whether, in the progrefs of the 

 piece, they correfpond with this introdudory defaription. What 

 further explanations thereader cxpeds, he muft feek, rather in the 

 Italics, of the marginal diredions, than in the courfe of the dialogue. 

 Equally deficient are the German plays, in the decorums, proprie- 

 ties, and decencies of dramatic charader, which are fhewn, by ob- 

 ferving the circumftances, of rank, and age, of time, and place, and 

 making the perfonages fpeak what fuits their fituation, or the 

 emergency of the moment. But in nothing is the irregularity and 

 rude tafte of the German School more palpable, than in the ftrange 

 mixture of the bombaftic and pompous, with the low and fcurri- 

 lous, in flyle; and of the folemn and horrible, with the ludicrous 

 and farcical, in incident. The author feems to march with a flow- 

 pace on enormous ftilts ; from which, when we leaft exped it, he 

 fuddenly defcends, or rather falls, to fpravvl and grovel in the 

 mire of vulgar buffoonery. I (hall, in the progrefs of this efTay, 

 attempt to point out the fource of this peculiarity, which begins 

 to re-appear in fome of our modern Englijh plays ; mean time, for 

 examples of the pradice, I may refer the reader to the low tip- 

 pling dialogues of the Robbers in Schiller's play of .that name, and 

 to the ridiculous charader of a general officer, in his Minijier. 



I BELIEVE I have now adverted to the moft flrikiag features 

 of peculiarity in the German writers. The reader may fatisfy 

 himfelf, with the juflnefs of the reprefentation, by confulting, at 



random, 



