ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 167 



Englifh and German plays are frequently fplit into a much 

 greater number. And I thought it a very juft, as well as na- 

 tural anfwer, which a countryman in the pit gave to a friend 

 of mine, who entered in the middle of one of Shakespeare's 

 tragedies, and afked him to what act they had got, " I be- 

 " lieve, Sir, faid he, they are juft going to begin the ninth." 



The morals of thefe German plays are in general unex- 

 ceptionable. There is no approach towards indelicacy, except 

 in one er two inftances in the more ferious fcenes, to a kind of 

 indelicacy, arifing from a want of that nice fenfe of dignity 

 and decorum which the family of the mufe requires. There 

 is, however, a licence of thinking on fome fubjects, that 

 tinctures pretty ftrongly of feveral of the performances in que- 

 ftion ; and by a combination not unfrequent among fenti- 

 mentalifts, the language is highly virtuous, while the action is 

 libertine and immoral. From the author of the Sorrows of 

 Werter, this does not furprife ; but in a play, written by a~ 

 perfon of a grave character, ProfefTor Unzer of Altona, one- 

 would hardly expect to have found a prayer to the virgin con- 

 cluded by a folemn refolution of fuicide, and the ftrength of 

 mind with which the heroine looks on the poifoned beverage 

 before her, afcribed, in the very language of devotion, to the 

 power and efficacy of prayer. 



Besides the delicacy of decorum, and propriety in the man- 

 ners and the language of a play, there is a fort of delicacy in its. 

 very pafftons and diflrefs, which highly polifhed theatres re- 

 quire, the neglect of which is difagreeable to the feelings and 

 the tafte of a very refined people. The forrow that melts, not 

 the anguifh that tears ; the fear that agitates, not the terror 

 that overwhelms the foul, are the paflions which fuch an au^ 

 dience relifhes in a tragedy. The German theatre does not 

 allow for this delicacy of feeling. Its horrors and its diflrefs 

 affault the imagination and the heart of the reader with un- 

 fparing force ; it loves to trace thofe horrors and that diflrefs 



through 



