204 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



This was a Angular event in the hiftory of Acolhuacan, 

 in which we read in general, examples of the greatefl: 

 feverity of government. We fliould be happy, if it 

 were in our power, to produce here fome fragments 

 which we have feen of the poetry of thofe nations, to 

 fatisfy the curious among our readers (e). 



Dramatic, as well as lyric poetry, was greatly in re- 

 pute among the Mexicans. Their theatre, on which 

 thofe kinds of compofitions were reprefented, was a 

 fquare terras uncovered, raifed in the market-place, or 

 the lower area of fome temple, and fuitably high, that 

 the a&ors might be feen and heard by all. That which 

 was conftru&ed in the market-place of Tlatelolco, was 

 made of ftone and lime, and, agreeably to what Cortes 

 affirms, thirteen feet high, and thirty paces in length 

 every way. 



Cav. Boturini fays, that the Mexican comedies were 

 excellent, and that among the antiques which he had in 

 his curious mufeum, were two dramatic compofitions on 

 the celebrated apparitions of the mother of God to the 

 Mexican Neophyte Gio. Didaco, in which a particular 

 delicacy and harmony in the expreffions was difcernible. 

 We have never feen any compofition of this nature, and 

 although we do not doubt of the delicacies of the lan- 

 guage of them, we cannot readily believe that their co- 

 medies were much according to the rales of the drama, 

 or deferving of the exceffive praife of that annalift. 

 The defcription which Acofta has left us of their theatre 

 and reprefentations, in which he mentions thofe which 

 were made at Cholula at the great fellival of the god 



£>uetzalcoatl 9 



(<?) P. Orazio Carocci, a learned Milanefe Jefuit, publilhed fome elegant 

 verfes of the ancient Mexicans, in his admirable grammar of the Mexican lan- 

 guage, printed in Mexico about the middle of the laft century. 



