166 ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 



according to the rules of art ; for the little circumftances I men- 

 tion are fooner perceived by an ignorant and untutored fpecta- 

 tor than by a critical and experienced one. A critical and ex- 

 perienced one is indeed a very challengeable judge of the effects 

 of this deception. He has got too much behind the fcene to 

 allow it its due impreflion on his mind j and is exercifing other 

 faculties than that feeling and imagination, which the lefs in- 

 formed fpectator allows to overpower him with all the pity, the 

 wonder and the terror, with which the poet has rilled his piece. 

 In point of deception, however, fuppoling what I contend for 

 to be granted, the circumftance of time is, as Johnson very 

 well obferves, extremely pliant to the imagination. Nor is 

 place perhaps lefs accommodating. Indeed I am inclined to 

 think it rather more fo, for this reafon, that time holds a rela- 

 tion to ourfelves ; but the mimic world of the ftage, from 

 which we draw our ideas of place, is fomething quite diftinct 

 from the world of the pit or boxes in which we ourfelves are 

 placed. Still, however, a violent infringement of probability 

 in either of thofe particulars, offends that belief which the cap- 

 tive fancy wifhed to pay to the dramatic creation before it. 

 The di virion of acts, which is very arbitrary on our ftage, and 

 not lefs fo in fome of thefe German productions, affords, in 

 my opinion, an opportunity favourable to this diltance of place 

 and lapfe of time, which, in both theatres, are fo often in- 

 dulged. When the curtain is down, and the mufic plays, 

 there is a paufe in our attention, a calling off of our imagina- 

 tion from its immediate purfuit, which fufEciently prepares 

 both for a very confiderable change of place and of time, with- 

 out wounding the unity of our feeling by the difcordance of 

 the fcene. In the divifion of our plays, and in that of the 

 German ones I am now confidering, the author is not bold 

 enough to multiply the acts, in words, beyond the number five; 

 but, in truth, if by an act is underflood a fubdivifion of the 

 piece, confifting of a certain feparate complete part, both the 



Englifli 



