a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant
modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must
be in some place; but the different actions that compleat a story
may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the
absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and
then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens,
but a modern theatre?

By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the
time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the
acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and
poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations
for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome,
the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the
catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither
war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome
nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us.
The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions, and
why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened
years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing
but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of
existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years
is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we
easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly
permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.

It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It
is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited,
whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as
representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were