D R A 



105 



D R A 



Dma. ry, which, though interwoven to suit the taste of the 

 ,~""*' times, can with ease be disentangled and rejected 

 from the body of the piece,) are regular and com- 

 pactly symmetrical, without the stiffness and preci- 

 sion of the Galilean school. If we wished to impress 

 a stranger with a high idea of English genius if his 

 leisure permitted him to read our authors for some 

 time, we should certainly put Shakespeare into his 

 hands ; but if we wished, by one visit to the theatre, to 

 convince him that we had a great and powerful trage- 

 dy, we should certainly take him to the acting of Ve- 

 nice Presented. Whatever poetry in general owed to 

 Dryden, the stage was not his debtor ; at least he did 

 not atone for the bombast of his rhyming tragedies, till 

 experience in the drama taught him to unfetter his 

 verse. The reign of Charles was certainly, (with the 

 bright exception of Otway, ) upon the whole, a period 

 unfortunate for dramatic poetry. When the theatres, 

 that had been shut by the fanatics, were again thrown 

 loose, the sudden demand for pieces drove writers to 

 search, in translation, for those materials which they 

 hat! not leisure or genius to invent. Comic plots were 

 borrowed from the Spanish ; and the taste of the mo- 

 narch himself, it lias been alleged, introduced the rage 

 for rhyming tragedies, after the manner of the French. 

 It may l>e questioned, however, how far the taste of 

 the monarch, or his court, was decisive in this latter 

 point. Dryden himself foand rhyme to be his forte in 

 versification ; and it is to haste in play-making, as well 

 as to his pertinacious defence of couplet tragedies, that 

 we may chiefly ascribe the degeneracy of the drama in 

 his time. Had Dryden, when he began his dramatic 

 career, found himself strong in blank verse, the bad 

 tarte of the monarch and his court would not have dri- 

 ven him into rhyme. From the close of the seventeenth 

 to that of the eighteenth century, British comedy lias 

 l)een cultivated by Cibber, Farquhar, Congrcve. Sheri- 

 dan, and others, with a vein of humour only inferior to 

 that of Moliere, and with an elegance that even sur- 



passes the French school ; but it is remarkable, that in 

 the last century only one great tragedy has been pro- 

 duced: the reader will easily anticipate that we mean 

 the Douglas of Home. The general complaint, which 

 ascribes this deficiency of dramatic genius to the small 

 number and extravagant size of the theatres of the ca- 

 pital, has every appearance of being founded in jus- 

 tice. () 



DRAPETES, a genus of plants of the class Tetran- 

 dria, and order Monogynia. See BOTANY, p. 132, 



DRAWBACK, a customhouse word, denoting the 

 amount of duty repaid, or, in other words, drawn back, 

 on the exportation of particular articles of merchandise. 

 Drawbacks proceed on the principle, that it is politic 

 to avoid burdening our cxportations with any extra 

 charges, whatever we may do in regard to home con- 

 sumption. The writers on commerce generally consi- 

 der them along with bounty ; but while the policy of 

 the former is commonly very questionable, there can 

 be no doubt of the expediency of the latter. To allow 

 a drawback, is, in fact, nothing more than to leave the 

 article as we found it ; but bounties operate to give a 

 forced direction to the employment of capital. In ma- 

 ny articles, our duties of custom or excise are so heavy, 

 as to make the amount of drawback considerable, and 

 to render the grant of it a matter to be accompanied 

 with great precautions. The exporting merchant must 

 make oath of the former payment of the duties in ques- 

 tion ; and, in the event of fraud, both forfeiture of the 

 goods, and a penalty in addition, are incurred. Fraud, 

 in the case of drawbacks, is apprehended less from 

 misrepresentation at the customhouse, than from at- 

 tempts to reland clandestinely, for the purpose of sale 

 at home, the very goods, for the exportation of which 

 the drawback had been obtained. The law according- 

 ly enacts the forfeiture of all vessels, carriages, or ap- 

 purtenances used in the relanding, along with the 

 forfeiture of twice the drawback, by the party concern- 

 ed in this iniquitous transaction, (jj) 



Drapetcs, 

 Drawback. 



DRAWING. 



| DRAWING, or DESIGN, is that part of the art of painting 

 '' which relates to the terminations, contours, boundaries 

 of objects in whole, and in their parts. In sculpture it 

 extends no further than to the geometrical arrangement 

 of those terminations, according to their real figure and 

 proportion ; but in painting there is superodded to 

 thiv the consideration of the perspective appearance of 

 this proportionate arrangement of figure, as viewed 

 from one point. This is called drawing, by way of excel- 

 lence, to distinguish it from all mere geometrical regu- 

 lar delineations, and is undoubtedly the highest and 

 most comprehensive mechanical excellence of the art. 



As all the considerations of sculpture are therefore 

 necessarily included in drawing, and make but a part 

 of it, those principles in which the chief excellence of 

 drawing consists, must be considered as equally appli- 

 cable to sculpture, as far as it goes. The designer must 

 be conversant with those laws of gravity by which 

 alone all bodies are sustained in action or in motion, by 

 the ncee>sary regulation of an equilibrium in their parts. 

 He must likewise dispose and arrange, in true perspec- 

 tive, all his object* in their proper situations, and rela- 

 tive magnitudes, distinguishing the several qualities of 



VOL. VIII. PART I. 



surface, whether of trees, of rocks, of buildings, or of Drawing, 

 draperies, according to the economy and character of tile r n ' v - " 

 parts peculiar to each. As the human figure combines """Y" 

 a greater variety of important considerations than that 

 of any other subject whatever, all the great designers 

 have devoted themselves to the study of it with such 

 peculiar predilection, that the terms correct drawing, a 

 skilful draftsman, and the like, almost exclusively refer 

 to the skilful delineation of the human body. AH the 

 different styles of design may be classed under the three 

 following heads : 



1. The indiscriminate representation of ordinary and Individual 

 familiar objects, with all the imperfections and peculia- nature, 

 rities of the individual model. This is the vulgar idea 



of the imitation of nature, and in it nothing is required 

 as far s relates to style and character, but skill and ac- 

 curacy of the eye and hand. This was the department 

 of art which the Dutch school adopted. 



2. The selection of nature, or the representation of Select na- 

 oljjects selected from the mass, with some particular ture - 

 view or design 



3. The grand style, (Beau Ideal. Gran'gusto,) which Grand style. 

 is the selection and judicious combination of different 



