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Dress, and the modes of external behaviour, are justly regulated by custom in every country. The deep red or vermilion with which the ladies in France cover their cheeks, appears to them beautiful in spite of nature; and strangers cannot altogether be justified in condemning this practice, confidering the lawful authority of custom, or of the fashion, as it is called. It is told of the people who inhabit the skirts of the Alps facing the north, that the swelling they universally have in the neck is to them agreeable. So far has custom power to change the nature of things, and to make an object originally disagreeable take on an opposite appearance.

But as to the emotions of propriety and impropriety, and in general as to all emotions involving the sense of right or wrong, custom has little authority, and ought to have none at all. Emotions of this kind, being qualified with the confciousness of duty, take naturally place of every other feeling; and it argues a shameful weakness or degeneracy of mind, to find them in any case so far fubdued as to submit to custom.

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These few hints may enable us to judge in some measure of foreign manners, whether exhibited by foreign writers or our own. A comparison betwixt the ancients and the moderns, was some time ago a favourite subject. Those who declared for the former, thought it a sufficient justification of ancient manners, that they were supported by the authority of custom. Their antagonifts, on the other hand, refusing submifsion to custom as a standard of taste, condemned ancient manners in several instances as irrational. In this controverfy, an appeal being made to different principles, without the flightest attempt on either side to establish a common standard, the dispute could have no end. The hints above given tend to establish a standard, for judging how far the lawful authority of custom may be extended, and within what limits it ought to be confined. For the fake of illustration, we shall apply this standard in a few instan

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Human facrifices, the cruellest effect of blind and groveling superstition, wore gradually out of use by the prevalence of reafon son and humanity. In the days of Sophocles and Euripides, the traces of this savage practice were still recent; and the Athenians, through the prevalence of custom, could without disgust suffer human facrifices to be represented in their theatre. The 14 phigenia of Euripides is a proof of this fact. But a human facrifice, being altoge ther inconsistent with modern manners, as producing horror instead of pity, cannot with any propriety be introduced upon a modern stage. I must therefore condemn the Iphigenia of Racine, which, instead of the tender and sympathetic paffions, substitutes disgust and horror. But this is not all. Another objection occurs against every fable that deviates so remarkably from improved notions and sentiments. If it should even command our belief, by the authority of genuine hiftory, its fictitious and unnatural appearance, however, would prevent its taking fuch hold of the mind as to produce a perception of reality *. A human facrifice is so unnatural, and to us so improbable, that few will be affected with the reprefentation of it more than with a fairy tale. The objection first mentioned strikes also against the Phedra of this author. The queen's paffion for her stepson, being unnatural and beyond all bounds, creates aversion and horror rather than compaffion. The author in his preface observes, that the queen's pafsion, however unnatural, was the effect of destiny and the wrath of the gods; and he puts the fame excuse in her own mouth. But what is the wrath of a heathen god to us Christians? We acknowledge no desti ny in paffion; and if love be unnatural, it never can be relished. A supposition, like what our author lays hold of, may poffibly cover flight improprieties; but it will never engage our sympathy for what appears to us frantic or extravagant.

* See chap. 2. part 1. fect. 6.

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Neither can I relish the catastrophe of this tragedy. A man of taste may peruse, without disgust, a Grecian performance describing a fea-monster sent by Neptune to destroy Hippolytus. He considers, that such a story might agree with the religious creed of Greece; and, entering into ancient opiVOL. II. nions,

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nions, may be pleased with the story, as what probably had a strong effect upon a Grecian audience. But he cannot have the same indulgence for fuch a reprefentation upon a modern stage; for no story which carries a violent air of fiction, can ever move us in any confiderable degree.

In the Coepbores of Efchylus*, Orestes is made to say, that he was commanded by Apollo to avenge his father's murder; and yet if he obeyed, that he was to be delivered to the furies, or be struck with fome horrible malady. The tragedy accordingly concludes with a chorus, deploring the fate of Oreftes, obliged to take vengeance against a mother, and involved thereby in a crime against his will. It is impossible for any man at present to accommodate his mind to opinions so irrational and absurd, which must disgust him in perusing even a Grecian story. Among the Greeks again, grossly superftitious, it was a common opinion, that the report of a man's death was a presage of his death; and Oreftes, in

* Act 2.

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