Indignatur enim priratis et prope socco
  Dignis carminibus narrari coena Thyestae—­

says Horace:  and in another place,

  Effutire leves indigna tragaedia versus.—­

Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more for tragedy, which is by Aristotle, in the dispute betwixt the epic poesy and the dramatic, for many reasons he there alleges, ranked above it.”

When we consider these various essentials of a rhyming play, we may perhaps, without impropriety define it to be a metrical romance of chivalry in form of a drama.  The hero is a perfect knight-errant, invincible in battle, and devoted to his Dulcinea by a love, subtle, metaphysical and abstracted from all the usual qualities of the instinctive passion; his adventures diversified by splendid descriptions of bull-feasts, battles, and tournaments; his fortune undergoing the strangest, most causeless, and most unexpected varieties; his history chequered by the marvellous interference of ghosts, spectres, and hell itself; his actions effecting the change of empires, and his co-agents being all lords, and dukes, and noble princes, in order that their rank might, in some slight degree, correspond to the native exultation of the champion’s character.

The reader may smile at this description, and feel some surprise, how compositions, involving such gross absurdities, were tolerated by an audience having pretence to taste and civilisation But something may be said for the heroic drama.

Although the manners were preposterous, and the changes of fortune rapid and improbable, yet the former often attained a sublime, though forced elevation of sentiment; and the latter, by rapidity of transition and of contrast, served in no slight degree to interest as well as to surprise the audience.  If the spectators were occasionally stunned with bombast, or hurried and confused by the accumulation of action and intrigue, they escaped the languor of a creeping dialogue, and the taedium of a barren plot, of which the termination is descried full three acts before it can be attained.  Besides, if these dramas were sometimes extravagant, beautiful passages often occurred to atone for these sallies of fury.  In others, ingenuity makes some amends for the absence of natural feeling, and the reader’s fancy is pleased at the expense of his taste.  In representation, the beauty of the verse, assisted by the enunciation of such actors as Betterton and Mohun, gilded over the defects of the sense, and afforded a separate gratification.  The splendour of scenery also, in which these plays claimed a peculiar excellence, afforded a different but certain road to popular favour; and thus this drama, with all its faults, was very far from wanting the usual requisites for success.  But another reason for its general popularity may be sought in a certain correspondence with the manners of the time.