but to make a comedy, is to build like Aesop in the air.  It is in vain to boast that the compass of invention is as wide as the extent of desire; every thing is limited, and the mind of man like every thing else.  Besides, invention must be in conformity to nature; but distinct and remarkable characters are very rare in nature herself.  Moliere has got hold on the principal touches of ridicule.  If any man should bring characters less strong, he will be in danger of dulness.  Where comedy is to be kept up by subordinate personages, it is in great danger.  All the force of a picture must arise from the principal persons, and not from the multitude clustered up together.  In the same manner, a comedy, to be good, must be supported by a single striking character, and not by under-parts.

But, on the contrary, tragick characters are without number, though of them the general outlines are limited; but dissimulation, jealousy, policy, ambition, desire of dominion, and other interests and passions, are various without end, and take a thousand different forms in different situations of history; so that, as long as there is tragedy, there may be always novelty.  Thus the jealous and dissembling Mithridates, so happily painted by Racine, will not stand in the way of a poet, who shall attempt a jealous and dissembling Tiberius.  The stormy violence of an Achilles will always leave room for the stormy violence of Alexander.

But the case is very different with avarice, trifling vanity, hypocrisy, and other vices, considered as ridiculous.  It would be safer to double and treble all the tragedies of our greatest poets, and use all their subjects over and over, as has been done with Oedipus and Sophonisba, than to bring again upon the stage, in five acts, a Miser, a Citizen turned gentleman, a Tartuffe, and other subjects sufficiently known.  Not that these popular vices are less capable of diversification, or are less varied by different circumstances, than the vices and passions of heroes; but that if they were to be brought over again in comedies, they would be less distinct, less exact, less forcible, and, consequently, less applauded.  Pleasantry and ridicule must be more strongly marked than heroism and pathos, which support themselves by their own force.  Besides, though these two things, of so different natures, could support themselves equally in equal variety, which is very far from being the case, yet comedy, as it now stands, consists not in incidents, but in characters.  Now it is by incidents only that characters are diversified, as well upon the stage of comedy, as upon the stage of life.  Comedy, as Moliere has left it, resembles the pictures of manners drawn by the celebrated La Bruyere.  Would any man, after him, venture to draw them over again, he would expose himself to the fate of those who have ventured to continue them.  For instance, what could we add to his character of the absent man?  Shall we put him in other circumstances?