Page:Elfrida, a Dramatic Poem - Mason (1752).djvu/10

notion, every thing was to be allowed to the present taste, which nature and Aristotle could possibly dispense with; and nothing of intrigue or refinement was to be admitted, at which antient judgment could reasonably take offence. Good sense, as well as antiquity, prescribed an adherence to the three great Unities; these therefore were strictly observed. But on the other hand, to follow the modern masters in those respects wherein they had not so faultily deviated from their predecessors, a story was chosen, in which the tender, rather than the noble passions were predominant, and in which even love had the principal share. Characters too were drawn as nearly approaching to private ones, as Tragic dignity would permit; and affections rais'd rather from the impulse of common humanity, than the distresses of royalty and the fate of kingdoms. Beside this, for the sake of natural embellishment, and to reconcile mere modern readers to that simplicity of fable, in which I thought it necessary to copy the antients, I contriv'd to lay the scene in an old romantic forest. For, by this means, I was enabled to enliven. the poem by various touches of pastoral description; not affectedly brought in from the store-house of a picturesque imagination, but necessarily resulting from the scenery of the place itself: A beauty, so extremely striking in the Comus of Milton, and the As you like it of Shakespeare; and of which the Greek Muse (tho' fond of rural imagery) has afforded few examples, besides that admirable one in the Philoctetes of Sophocles.

By this idea I could wish you to regulate your criticism. I need not, I think, observe to you that thesedeviations