There is also another Particular, which may be reckoned among the Blemishes, or rather the false Beauties, of our English Tragedy:  I mean those particular Speeches, which are commonly known by the Name of Rants.  The warm and passionate Parts of a Tragedy, are always the most taking with the Audience; for which Reason we often see the Players pronouncing, in all the Violence of Action, several Parts of the Tragedy which the Author writ with great Temper, and designed that they should have been so acted.  I have seen Powell very often raise himself a loud Clap by this Artifice.  The Poets that were acquainted with this Secret, have given frequent Occasion for such Emotions in the Actor, by adding Vehemence to Words where there was no Passion, or inflaming a real Passion into Fustian.  This hath filled the Mouths of our Heroes with Bombast; and given them such Sentiments, as proceed rather from a Swelling than a Greatness of Mind.  Unnatural Exclamations, Curses, Vows, Blasphemies, a Defiance of Mankind, and an Outraging of the Gods, frequently pass upon the Audience for tow’ring Thoughts, and have accordingly met with infinite Applause.

I shall here add a Remark, which I am afraid our Tragick Writers may make an ill use of.  As our Heroes are generally Lovers, their Swelling and Blustring upon the Stage very much recommends them to the fair Part of their Audience.  The Ladies are wonderfully pleased to see a Man insulting Kings, or affronting the Gods, in one Scene, and throwing himself at the Feet of his Mistress in another.  Let him behave himself insolently towards the Men, and abjectly towards the Fair One, and it is ten to one but he proves a Favourite of the Boxes. Dryden and Lee, in several of their Tragedies, have practised this Secret with good Success.

But to shew how a Rant pleases beyond the most just and natural Thought that is not pronounced with Vehemence, I would desire the Reader when he sees the Tragedy of OEdipus, to observe how quietly the Hero is dismissed at the End of the third Act, after having pronounced the following Lines, in which the Thought is very natural, and apt to move Compassion;

  ’To you, good Gods, I make my last Appeal;
  Or clear my Virtues, or my Crimes reveal. 
  If in the Maze of Fate I blindly run,
  And backward trod those Paths I sought to shun;
  Impute my Errors to your own Decree: 
  My Hands are guilty, but my Heart is free.’

Let us then observe with what Thunder-claps of Applause he leaves the Stage, after the Impieties and Execrations at the End of the fourth Act; [4] and you will wonder to see an Audience so cursed and so pleased at the same time;

  ’O that as oft have at Athens seen,—­

[Where, by the Way, there was no Stage till many Years after OEdipus.]

...  The Stage arise, and the big Clouds descend; So now, in very Deed, I might behold This pond’rous Globe, and all yen marble Roof, Meet like the Hands of Jove, and crush Mankind.  For all the Elements, &c.’

[Footnote 1:  Here Aristotle is not quite accurately quoted.  What he says of the tragedies which end unhappily is, that Euripides was right in preferring them,