ACCOUNT' of the GERMAN THEATRE. 169 



The Germans have accordingly adopted, with the greateft ea- 

 gernefs, the EnglHh tragedies mofl calculated to pleafe this 

 turn of mind. Shakespeare is their favourite author, and 

 the model of fome of their mod popular tragedies. To this 

 idea, the love of fentiment I have before taken notice of, may- 

 be eafily reconciled. The fentiment thefe plays exhibit, is not 

 the fentiment one meets with in French authors ', it is not the 

 nice and delicate feeling of the petites morales, or manners ; it 

 is that deep impaflioned fenfibility, which refides in ferious and 

 ardent minds, which can brood with melancholy, or kindle with 

 enthufiafm. 



In the German comedy, fomewhat of the fame thought- 

 fulnefs, phlegm perhaps a Frenchman might call it, may be 

 traced. We find not the gay and fportive language with which 

 the comic mufe of France forms her lively and elegant dia- 

 logue ', not thofe nice and delicate tints with which her light 

 and flying pencil marks the pictures of her fcene ; but a flyle 

 more ferious and reflective in the one, and colours more ftrong 

 and hard in the other. 



A circumstance very obfervable in the German theatre, 

 is the frequent minutenefs and prolixity of the fcene. This is 

 naturally the cafe in an early and unrefined period of the 

 drama. To felect ftriking and luminous parts of a ftory, or 

 of a feries of actions, to exhibit thofe in one ftrong point of 

 view, and to leave the fubordinate parts to be filled up by the 

 imagination of the reader or the fpectator, is a fort of abftrac- 

 tion which belongs to a more advanced and cultivated period. 

 In the firft rude elfays of painting, one picture contains diffe- 

 rent actions of the fame perfons ; and, in early narrative, every 

 circumftance that paffed, and every word that was uttered by 

 the perfons of whom the relation fpeaks, is introduced. In 

 dramatic poetry, in the fame way, the earlier and lefs culti- 

 vated poets are not contented with fhewing the perfons of the 

 drama only in the great and important fcenes to which the 

 Vol. II. Y courfe 



