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Untitled Article
cessary that we should clearly know what he means by paying a compliment so inconsistent , to all appearance , with his previous verdicts and other nations . " Since it is unquestionable , " savs he , fc < that inost of the old 1
dramatic writers were men of no common talents , ' ( and therefore we may add , not to be apprehended , tried and transported by men of common talents ;) " and that their defects arise chiefly from the depraved taste , which began to make a fearful progress in their times , they cannot have failed to strike out passages of considerable beauty . " The diction is some what equivocating ; but a sufficient number of fine passages have been suffered to remain . Presently afterwards , he says , " The diction ( for we adhere to our distinction ) which the dramatic writers
had imitated , mostly at second-hand from the Italians , is always flowing and pleasing to the ear . ' Because redundant , and of a depraved taste ! Again : — "The habitual negligence with which those purveyors of the stage wrote , " ( purveyors Yo , he means ;) " enabled them to write so much , that they must now and then have stumbled upon some striking situation , some
affecting exhibition of passion . Let the admissions and positions of the foregoing passages be borne in mind . We will now give the concluding paragraphs of this unique article . The writer has just quoted the scene from the Spanish Tragedy : —
" There is great power in all this . Yet it is only at a certain stage of refinement , a very early one indeed—that the public can take pleasure in this kind of amplification upon the stage . ' ' " There is a period when uneducated men are very much alive to exhibitions of the faculty of expressing thought under a great variety of forms . Acquainted in themselves with the wonderful power of language , but no less conscious of the difficulty of using it beyond a
certain number of daily common phrases , they are astonished at the richness which the same language displays when used by the orator or the poet . This admiration , in the infancy of society , is so great , that it l ^ ads to tbe notion of inspiration . A man gifted with remarkable powers of language cannot be conceived to be like other men : there must be a divine spirit speaking in him . A pleasure in the mere sound of flowing and varied phrases , is discoverable at all times in the mass of tbe people . It is this pleasure that fill * the churches and chapels with people who do not comprehend u single phrase in a long discourse . " ( Ahem !) " But a mere display of elocution has lost its charm with the average of the classes that frequent the stage , " ( Qy . theatre ?) " The reason is implied in an answer of Horace Wai pole , which we quote from memory . When asked where good language might be acquired , he said , ' Go to the next chandlers shop , and you will hear it . ' " W .
The reviewer ' s train of definitions , axioms , and their neces-Rary deductions- which deductions seem very seldom to have entered his mind— -thus becomes sufficiently complete . If
Untitled Article
The London Review v . The British Drama . £ 56
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 253, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/61/
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