of the Play, once removed, it ends with that Resemblance of Truth or Nature, that the audience are satisfied with the conduct of it. "Thus this great man delivered to us the Image of a Play; and I must confess it is so lively, that, from thence, much light has been derived to the forming it more perfectly, into Acts and Scenes. But what Poet first limited to Five, the number of the Acts, I know not: only we see it so firmly established in the time of HORACE, that he gives it for a rule in Comedy. "_Neu brevier quinto, neu sit productior actu:_ "So that you see, the Grecians cannot be said to have consumated this Art: writing rather by Entrances than by Acts; and having rather a general indigested notion of a Play, than knowing how and where to bestow the particular graces of it. "But since the Spaniards, at this day, allow but three Acts, which they call _Jornadas_, to a Play; and the Italians, in many of theirs, follow them: when I condemn the Ancients, I declare it _is not altogether because they have not five Acts to every Play; but because they have not confined themselves to one certain number_. 'Tis building a house, without a model: and when they succeeded in such undertakings, they ought to have sacrificed to Fortune, not to the Muses. "Next, for the Plot, which ARISTOTLE called [Greek: to muthos], and often [Greek: ton pragmaton sunthesis]; and from him, the Romans, _Fabula_. It has already been judiciously observed by a late Writer that 'in their _TRADGEDIES_, it was only some tale derived from Thebes or Troy; or, at least, something that happened in those two Ages: which was worn so threadbare by the pens of all the Epic Poets; and even, by tradition itself of the _talkative Greeklings_, as BEN. JOHNSON calls them, that before it came upon the Stage, it was already known to all the audience. And the people, as soon as ever they heard the name of _OEDIPUS_, knew as well as the Poet, that he had killed his father by a mistake, and committed incest with his mother, before the Play; that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the ghost of _LAIUS_: so that they sate, with a yawning kind of expectation, till he was to come, with his eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or two of verses, in a tragic tone, in complaint of his misfortunes.' "But one _OEDIPUS_, _HERCULES_, or _MEDEA_ had been tolerable. Poor people! They scaped not so good cheap. They had still the _chapon bouille_ set before them, till their appetites were cloyed with the same dish; and the Novelty being gone, the Pleasure vanished. So that one main end of Dramatic Poesy, in its definition [p. 513] (which was, to cause _Delight_) was, of consequence, destroyed. "In their _COMEDIES_, the Romans generally borrowed their Plots from the Greek poets: and theirs were commonly a little girl stolen or wandered from her parents, brought back unknown to the same city, there got with