i 7 o APPENDIX. 



fons of a Play, whatever is &id or done by any of them, muft 

 be confiitent with the manners which the Poet has given them 

 diftin&ly; and even the habits muft be proper to the degrees 

 and humours of the perlbns as well as in a picture. He who 

 entered in the firft act a young man, like Pericles Prince of 

 Tyre, muft not be in danger, in the fifth act, of committing 

 inceft with his daughter; nor an ufurer, without great pro- 

 bability and caufes of repentance, be turned into a cutting 

 Moorcraft. 



I am not fatisfied that the comparifon betwixt the two Arts,.. 

 in the laft paragraph, is altogether fo juft as it might haver 

 been ; but I am fure of this which follows. 



" The principal figure of the fubject muft appear in the 

 midft of the picture, under the principal light, to diftinguifh 

 it from the reft, which are only its attendants." Thus in a 

 Tragedy, or an Epic Poem, the hero of the piece muft be 

 advanced foremoft to the view of the reader or fpectator : He 

 muft outmine the reft of all the characters ; he muft appear 

 the prince of them, like the fun in the Copernican Syftem, 

 encompafled with the lefs noble planets. Becaufe the Hero 

 is the centre of the main action, all the lines from the circum- 

 ference tend to him alone ; he is the chief object of pity in the 

 Drama, and of admiration in the Epic Poem. 



As in a picture, befides the principal figures which compofe 

 it, and are placed in the midft of it, there are lefs " groupes, 

 or knots of figures difpofed at proper diftances," which are 

 parts of the piece, and feem to carry on the fame defign in a 

 more inferior manner: So in Epic Poetry there are Epifodes, 

 and a Chorus in Tragedy, which are members of the action,, 

 as growing out of it, not inferred into it. Such, in the ninth, 

 book of the fiLneis, is the Epifode of Nifus and Euryalus: 



the 



