164 ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 



in thefe pieces. Objects feen through the medium (a medium 

 too rather fluctuating and uncertain) in which the perfons of 

 the drama are placed, flrike them with a force which the reader 

 does not always readily allow, and become motives to a con- 

 duct of which he does not always perceive the neceffity or the 

 ufe. Characters fuch as thofe of Shakespeare, which act 

 from the original native feelings of the foul, are immediately 

 acknowledged by the correfponding feelings of the audience. 

 It is of no confequence in this particular, that they are fome- 

 times ideal beings, placed in a world of fancy, different from 

 the real. They have ftill a fet of feelings, confonant to that 

 fphere in which they are placed, and to thofe characters with 

 which the poet has inverted them. But in the metaphyseal 

 refinements of fentiment, the fame thing does not take place. 

 There the feelings are created, not the characters ; and we have 

 no leading radical idea to which we can refer them, to which 

 we can difcover that intimate relation, which it is the great ex- 

 cellence of the poet to preferve, and the great pleafure of the 

 reader or the fpectator to trace. 



The plots of thefe dramas are generally fimple, but rather 

 diffufe ; a fault to which the freedom from critical reflraints of 

 time and place, claimed by the authors of feveral of them, is 

 apt to lead. They are frequently too eafily anticipated in their 

 conclufion ; and, in the conduct, they do not produce many of 

 thofe finking theatrical fituations, which, even to the mod 

 enlightened fpectators, are highly pleafing, but which feem 

 abfolutely effential to the entertainment of an ordinary au- 

 dience. In perufing fome of thefe plays which have obtained 

 the mofl univerfal reputation in Germany, one is led to give the 

 audiences of that country credit for a high degree of refine- 

 ment, when we are told of the unbounded applaufe they be- 

 llow on thofe pieces, the merit of which does by no means lie 

 in flriking incidents, or in what are called coups de theatre, but 

 confifts chiefly in a minute developement of feeling and fenfi- 



bility, 



