Note 38 — CHAP. XV.

Though a soliloquy in the perturbation of passion is undoubtedly natural, and indeed not unfrequent in real life; yet Congreve, who himself has penned several good soliloquies, yields, with more candor than knowledge, that they are unnatural; and he only pretends to justify them from necessity. This he does in his dedication of the Double Dealer, in the following words. “When a man in soliloquy reasons with himself, and pro’s and con’s, and weighs all his designs; we ought not to imagine, that this man either talks to us, or to himself; he is only thinking, and thinking (frequently) such matter as were inexcuseable folly in him to speak. But because we are concealed spectators of the plot in agitation, and the poet finds it necessary to let us know the whole mystery of his contrivance, he is willing to inform us of this person’s thoughts; and to that end is forced to make use of the expedient of speech, no other better way being yet invented for the communication of thought.”