But in reading, what robe are we conscious of?
Some dim images of royalty--a crown and sceptre may float before our eyes, but who shall describe the fashion of it?
Do we see in our mind's eye what Webb or any other robe-maker could pattern?
This is the inevitable consequence of imitating everything, to make all things natural.

Whereas the reading of a tragedy is a fine abstraction.

It presents to the fancy just so much of external appearances as to make us feel that we are among flesh and blood, while by far the greater and better part of our imagination is employed upon the thoughts and internal machinery of the character.
But in acting, scenery, dress, the most contemptible things, call upon us to judge of their naturalness.
Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure which we take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, compared with that quiet delight which we find in the reading of it, to the different feelings with which a reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewer, reads a fine poem.

The accursed critical habit--the being called upon to judge and pronounce, must make it quite a different thing to the former.

In seeing these plays acted, we are affected just as judges.
When Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to see the pictures?
But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged out; which we know not to be the picture, but only to show how finely a miniature may be represented.