Long has a race of Heroes fill’d the stage,
  That rant by note, and thro’ the gamut rage;
  In songs, and airs, express their martial fire,
  Combat in trills, and in a feuge expire;
  While lull’d by sound, and undisturb’d by wit,
  Calm and serene, you indolently fit;
  And from the dull fatigue of thinking free,
  Hear the facetious fiddle’s rapartee;
  Our home-spun authors must forsake the field,
  And Shakespear to the soft Scarlatti yield. 
  To your new taste, the poet of this day,
  Was by a friend advis’d to form his play;
  Had Valentini musically coy,
  Shun’d Phaedra’s arms, and scorn’d the proffer’d joy,
  It had not mov’d your wonder to have seen,
  An Eunuch fly from an enamour’d queen. 
  How would it please, should me in English speak,
  And could Hippolitus reply in Greek?

We have been induced to transcribe these lines of Mr. Addison, in order to have the pleasure of producing so great an authority in favour of the English drama, when placed in contradistinction to an entertainment, exhibited by Eunuchs and Fidlers, in a language, of which the greatest part of the audience are ignorant; and from the nature of which no moral instruction can be drawn.

The chief excellence of this play certainly consists in the beauty and harmony of the verification.  The language is luxuriantly poetical.  The passion of Phaedra for her husband’s son has been considered by some critics as too unnatural to be shewn on the stage; and they have observed that the poet would have written more successfully if he had converted the son into a brother.  Poetical justice is carefully distributed; Phaedra and Lycon are justly made the sufferers, while Hippolitus and Ismena escape the vengeance of Theseus.  The play is not destitute of the pathetic, tho’ much more regard is paid to the purity and elegance of the language, than a poet more acquainted with the workings of the heart would have done.  We shall give an example to illustrate this observation.  When Theseus reproaches Hippolitus for his love to Ismena, and at the same time dooms him as the victim, of his revenge and jealousy, he uses these words,

  Canst thou be only clear’d by disobedience,
  And justified by crimes?—­What! love my foe! 
  Love one descended from a race of tyrants,
  Whose blood yet reeks on my avenging sword! 
  I’m curst each moment I delay thy fate: 
  Haste to the shades, and tell, the happy Pallas,
  Ismena’s flames, and let him taste such joys
  As thou giv’st me; go tell applauding Minos,
  The pious love you bore his daughter Phaedra;
  Tell it the chatt’ring ghosts, and hissing furies,
  Tell it the grinning fiends, till Hell found nothing
  To thy pleas’d ears, but Phaedra and Ismena.