improvement by exciting contempt and ridicule: by thus mixing ridicule
with vice, we feel a positive enjoyment in seeing it exposed, and it is
by this powerful engine that the manners of a people may be insensibly
improved. A satirical exhibition will at all times explode vice better
than serious argument; and it was from a conviction of this that the
Lacedemonians intoxicated their unhappy slaves in order that the
children of the state, by seeing the despicable state to which
drunkenness reduced a man, might learn a lesson that wanted no
explanation. In short, I think a theatrical representation may cure our
faults, but it can hardly subdue our more powerful vices; it may give a
check to our follies, but it will never succeed in curbing our passions.
When a man is under the sway of any particular passion, it is too firmly
rooted in his disposition to be eradicated by sitting a few hours in the
pit of a theatre; but with our petty foibles it is very different;
ridicule can, and often does, cure them, when it can be brought into
play against them; which, however, is not very often in real life, for a
man is more inclined to resent an attack upon his faults than his vices,
and would rather be thought the slave of his passions than be known to
have given way to a single weakness.

There is another great difference between Tragedy and Comedy, and that
is, with regard to diction: the language made use of by Comedy is
natural and proper, while that of Tragedy is laboured and elevated; we
meet not unfrequently with long declamation and sentences highly
polished, whereas passion never speculates in this manner; the feelings
of nature dictate the simplest language, and generally find a vent in
broken sentences, as we find them in the Greek tragedians.

The unities of the drama are rules which are the result of good sense,
and serve greatly to heighten the entertainment of the stage; they