The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor | Page 4

be issued every month, forming two volumes in the year.
To each number will be added, by way of appendix, an entire play or
after-piece, printed in a small elegant type, and paged so as to be
collected, at the end of each year, into a separate volume.
The work will be embellished with elegant engravings by the first
artists.

THE MIRROR OF TASTE,
AND
DRAMATIC CENSOR.
Vol. I. JANUARY 1810. No. 1.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem Quam quæ sunt oculis
subjecta fidelibus, et quæ Ipse sibi tradit spectator.[2] Hor. de Arte
Poetica.
[Footnote 2: What we hear With weaker passion will affect the heart
Than when the faithful eye beholds the part. --Francis. ]
CHAPTER I.
OBJECTIONS TO THE STAGE CONSIDERED AND REFUTED.
That amusement is necessary to man, the most superficial observation
of his conduct and pursuits may convince us. The Creator never
implanted in the hearts of all his intelligent creatures one common
universal appetite without some corresponding necessity; and that he
has given them an instinctive appetite for amusements as strong as any
other which we labour to gratify, may be clearly perceived in the efforts
of infancy, in the exertions of youth, in the pursuits of manhood, in the
feeble endeavours of old age, and in the pastimes which human
creatures, even the uninstructed savage nations themselves, have
invented for their relaxation and delight. This appetite evinces a
necessity for its gratification as much as hunger, thirst, and weariness,
intimate the necessity of bodily refection by eating, drinking, and
sleeping; and not to yield obedience to that necessity, would be to
counteract the intentions of Providence, who would not have furnished
us so bountifully as he has with faculties for the perception of pleasure,
if he had not intended us to enjoy it. Had the Creator so willed it, the
process necessary to the support of existence here below might have
been carried on without the least enjoyment on our part: the daily waste
of the body might be repaired without the sweet sensations which
attend eating and drinking; we might have had the sense of hearing
without the delight we derive from sweet sounds; and that of smelling
without the capability of enjoying the fragrance of the rose: but He
whose wisdom and beneficence are above all comprehension, has

ordained in another and a better manner, and annexed the most lively
sensations of pleasure to every operation he has made necessary to our
support, thereby making the enjoyment of pleasure one of the
conditions of our existence. This is an unanswerable refutation of one
of the most abominable doctrines of the atheists--the overbalance of
evil; and as such, that wise and amiable divine, doctor Paley, has made
use of it in his Natural Theology. It is true, that yielding to the tendency
of our frail, overweening nature to push enjoyment of every kind to its
utmost verge, men too often overshoot the mark, and frustrate the
object they have most at heart, by eagerness to accomplish it. For
though to a reasonable extent and in certain circumstances, all
enjoyments are harmless, they degenerate into crimes, when
excessively indulged, and particularly when the imagination is
overstrained to improve their zest, or to refine or exalt them beyond the
limits which Nature and sobriety prescribe. But this can no more be
alledged as a reason for renouncing the moderate use of the enjoyment,
than the excesses of the drunkard or glutton for the rejection of food
and drink.
That man must have amusement of some kind, "Nature speaks aloud."
He, therefore, who supplies society with entertainment unadulterated
by vice, who contributes to the pleasure without impairing the
innocence of his fellow-beings, and above all, who instructs while he
delights, may justly be ranked among the benefactors of mankind, and
lays claim to the gratitude and respect of the society he serves. To that
gratitude and respect the dramatic poet, and those who contribute to
give effect to his works, are richly entitled. Accordingly history
informs us that in all recorded ages theatrical exhibitions have been not
only held in high estimation by the most wise, learned, and virtuous
men, but sedulously cultivated and encouraged by legislators as matters
of high public importance, particularly in those nations that have been
most renowned for freedom and science.
In the multitude and diversity of conflicting opinions which divide
mankind upon all, even the most manifest truths, we find some upon
this subject. Many well-meaning, sincere christians have waged war
against the enjoyment of pleasure, as if it were the will of God that we

should go weeping and sorrowing through life. The learned bishop of
Rochester, speaking of a religious sect which carries this principle as
far as it will go, says: "their error is