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PREFACE TO THE BRITISH ENCHANTERS.

OF all publick fpectacles, that which should properly be called an Opera is calculated to give the highest delight. There is hardly any art but what is required to furnish towards the entertainment; and there is formething or other to be provided that may touch every sense, and please every palate.

The poet has a twofold task upon his hands in the dramatic and the lyric: the architect, the painter, the omposer, the actor, the finger, the dancer, &c. have each of them their feveral employments in the preparation, and in the execution.

The fame materials indeed, in different hands, will have different fuccefs; all depends upon a fkilful mixture of the various ingredients. A bad artist will make but a mere hodge-podge

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with the fame materials that one of a good tafte fhall prepare an excellent olio.

The feafoning must be fenfe. Unless there is wherewithal to please the understanding, the eye and the ear will foon grow tired.

The French opera is perfect in the decora tions, the dancing and magnificence; the Italian excels in the mufic and voices; but the drama falls fhort in both.

An English ftomach requires fomething folid and fubftantial, and will rife hungry from a regale of nothing but fweemeats.

An opera is a kind of ambigu: the table is finely illuminated, adorned with flowers and fruits, and every thing that the season affords fragrant or delightful to the eye or the odour; but unless there is fomething too for the appetite, it is odds but the guests break up diffatisfied.

It is incumbent upon the poet alone to provide for that in the choice of his fable, the conduct of his plot, the harmony of his numbers, the elevation of his fentiments, and the juftness

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of his characters. In this confifts the folid and the fubftantial.

The nature of this entertainment requires the plot to be formed upon fome flory in which Enchanters and Magicians have a principal part. In our modern heroic poems they fupply the place of the gods with the Ancients, and make a much more natural appearance by being mortals, with the difference only of being endowed with fupernatural power.

The characters fhould be great and illustrious; the figure the actor makes upon the stage is one part of the ornament; by confequence the fentiments must be fuitable to the characters in which love and honour will have the principal fhare.

The dialogue, which in the French and Italian is fet to notes, and fung, I would have pronounced if the numbers are of themselves harmonious, there will be no need of mufic to fet them off: a good verfe, well pronounced, is in itfelf mufical; and fpeech is certainly more natural for discourse than finging.

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Can any thing be more prepofterous than to behold Cato, Julius Cæfar, and Alexander the Great, ftrutting upon the ftage in the figure fongfters, perfonated by eunuchs ?

The finging, therefore, fhould be wholly applied to the lyrical part of the entertainment, which, by being freed from a tirefome, unnatural recitative, muft certainly adminifter more reasonable pleasure.

The feveral parts of the entertainment should be fo fuited to relieve one another as to be tedious in none; and the connexion fhould be fuch, that not one fhould be able to fubfift without the other like embroidery, fo fixed and wrought into the fubftance, that, no part of the ornament could be removed without tearing the Stuff.

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To introduce finging and dancing by head and fhoulders, no way relative to the action, does not turn a play into an opera, though that title is now promiscuously given to every farce fprinkled here and there with a fong and at dance.

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The richest lace, ridiculoufly fet on, will make but a fool's coat.

I will not take upon me to criticise what has appeared of this kind on the English stage: we have feveral poems under the name of Dramatic Operas by the best hands; but, in my opinion, the fubjects, for the most part, have been improperly chofen. Mr. Addison's Rofamond, and Mr. Congreve's Semele, though excellent in their kind, are rather masks than operas.

As I cannot help being concerned for the honour of my country, even in the minutest things, I am for endeavouring to outdo our "neighbours in performances of all kinds.

Thus, if the fplendour of the French opera, and the harmony of the Italian, were so skilfully interwoven with the charms of poetry, upon a regular dramatic bottom, as to inftruct as well as delight, to improve the mind as well as ravish the fenfe, there can be no doubt but fuch an addition would entitle our English opera to the preference of all others. The third part of the encouragement, of which we have been

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