CHAP. IX.

THE SUBJECT OF AMUSEMENTS

CONTINUED.

Theatrical Entertainments-Mufical Enter

tainments-Sunday Concerts-Dancing-Gaming and Cards-On Excefs in the Purfuit of Amusements.

THEATRICAL HEATRICAL Amusements are those which offer themselves to our attention in the next place.

The Stage is an inftrument too powerful not to produce visible and extensive effects wherever it is permanently employed. To the fentiments displayed in the tragic or the comic scene, to the examples of conduct afforded by popular characters under interesting circumftances, and to the general tone of manners and morals which pervades dramatic

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dramatic representations, the opinions, the difpofitions, and the actions of the frequenters of the theatre will acquire fome degree of fimilitude. What is heard with admiration and pleasure, will be remembered: what is feen under thofe impreffions, will be imitated. The impreffion of the fentiment will be, in some measure, modified by the leading qualities and inclinations of the mind of the hearer: and the fidelity with which the example will be copied, will depend on a variety of circumstances favouring or difcouraging clofeness of imitation. The growth of the plant will vary, as it is fixed in aufpicious or in ungenial foil: the quantity of its fruit will be affected by the fmiles and frowns of the sky. But there is feldom a foil fo ungenial as entirely to obftruct its vegetation; seldom a fky fo frowning as for ever to diveft it of fertility. From antient times to the present hour the influence of the Stage has been difcerned. Has it been the object to inculcate or to explode particular opinions; to elevate

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elevate or to degrade the characters of individuals; to ftrengthen or to shake exifting forms of government? From the days of Grecian and Roman antiquity, down to the French revolution, the Stage has been an engine eagerly employed by those who have had it under their control. Is its influence unperceived or difregarded in our own country? The legal reftraints to which the theatre is fubjected, and the stamp of official approbation which every new play muft receive before it can be exhibited, answer the question. The loweft orders of the people, mutable, uninformed, and paffionately addicted to spectacles of amusement, may probably be acted upon, through the medium of theatrical reprefentations, with greater facility and fuccefs than other claffes of the community. But, to speak of individuals among the upper and middle ranks of life, young women are the perfons likely to imbibe the strongest tinge from the fentiments and transactions fet before them in the drama. Openness of heart, warmth of feeling, a lively perception of the lu dicrous,

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dicrous, a strong fenfe of the charms of novelty, readiness to adopt opinions recommended by fashion, proneness to give large scope to the influence of affociation and of fympathy, these are circumftances which characterise youth, more efpecially youth in the female sex. And they are circumftances which render those whom they characterise liable, in a peculiar degree, to be practically impreffed by the language and examples brought forward on the Stage.

The English Stage has, for a confiderable time, laboured under the heavy imputation of being open to scenes and language of grofs indelicacy, which foreign theatres would have profcribed. This obfervation is applicable even to our tragedies. Of English comedy, an eminent writer (/) of our own country

(1) Dr. Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 4to. vol. ii. p. 547; where he quotes feveral inftances in confirmation of his remark. Mr. Diderot pronounces English comedy to be "without morals." Vol

country obferves, that, although we ourselves overlook its immorality, "all foreigners,

"the French especially, who are accustomed "to a better regulated and more decent "Stage, speak of it with surprise and afto"nishment." Of the moral changes which

taire, who, undoubtedly, was no rigid moralift, fpeaks of it in the ftrongeft terms of reprobation. M. Moralt, in his Letters upon the French and English Nations, afcribes the corruption of manners in London to comedy, as its chief cause. "Their comedy, he says, is like that of no other country. It is the school in which the youth of both "fexes familiarife themselves with vice, which is never "represented there as vice, but as mere gaiety."

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Dr. Blair's opinion of the principal of the English comic writers, from the reign of Charles II. to that of George II. is contained in the following fentence. "It is extremely "unfortunate that, together with the freedom and boldness "of the comic spirit in Britain, there fhould have been "joined such a spirit of indecency and licentiousness, as "has difgraced English comedy beyond that of any nation "fince the days of Ariftophanes." Lectures, vol. ii. p. 542. He adds, p. 547, 548, that" of late years a sen"fible reformation, derived in a confiderable degree from "the French theatre, has begun to take place." The improvement is unquestionable; but the innocence and morality of most of our modern comedies are only comparative.