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Show THE COMPOSITION OF BALLETS. 165 CHAPTER VIII. TERROR, RATHER THAN HORROR, IS SUFFICIENT FOR ANY DRAMATIC PRODUCTION. ON IMITATION. " Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet: Aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus." HOR. WHEN selecting passages from history for the purpose of adapting them to the Ballet, it is not necessary to make choice of those horrible deeds that have disgraced mankind, nor to extract from fiction those atrocities of which human nature appears almost incapable. The composer should reject those shocking and sanguinary events which generally form the subjects of the Spanish and English dramas. H e should avoid also the slightest imitation of that gloomy and improbable stuff with which certain authors are filled ; those poets w h o take a pleasure in describing all that is most desperate and dreadful in nature are not to be followed. Perhaps this species of subject may be adapted to the deepest tragedy ; but even then, good taste would reprove and reject productions carried, by an overheated imagination, beyond the bounds prescribed to imitative arts. W e must, in short, banish from the Ballet the Fausts, the Manfreds, and the Frank-ensteins1'. 11 |