fering virtue? And the agitation of these paffions is, even in real life, accompanied with a certain delight, which was, no doubt, intended to quicken us in the exercise of those social offices. Still further. 5. To the pleasure directly fpringing from thefe paffions we may add another, which naturally, but imperceptibly, almoft steals in upon us from reflexion. We are confcious to our own humanity on thefe tender occafions. We understand and feel that it is right for us to be affected by the diftreffes of others. Our pain is foftened by a fecret exultation in the rectitude of these sympathies. It is true, this reflex act of the mind is prevented, or fufpended at least for a time, when the fufferings are real, and concern those for whom we are most interested. But the fictions of the stage do not prefs upon us so closely. Putting all these things together, the conclufion is, That though the impreffions of the theatre are, in their immediate effect, painful to us, yet they muft, on the whole, afford an extreme pleasure, and that in proportion to the degree of the first painful impreffion. For not only our attention is rouzed, but our moral inftincts are gratified; we reflect with joy that they are fo, and we reflect too that the forrows which call them forth, and give this exercise to our humanity, are but fictitious. We are occupied, in a word, by a great event; we are melted into tears by a distressful one; the heart is relieved by this burst of sorrow; is cheared and animated by the fineft moral feelings; exults in the consciousness of its own fenfibility; and finds, in conclufion, that the whole is but an illufion. The fum is, that we are not fo properly delighted by the paffions, as through them. They give occafion to the most pleasing movements and gratulations. The art of the poet indeed confifts in giving pain. But nature and reflexion fly to our relief; and though they do not convert our pain into joy (for that methinks would be little lefs than a new kind of tranfubftantiation) they have an equivalent effect in producing an exquifite joy out of our preceding forrows. 119. AUT FAMAM SEQUERE, &c.] The connection lies thus: Language muft agree with character; character with fame, or at least with itself. 123. SIT MEDEA FEROX INVICTAQUE.] Horace took this inftance from Euripides, where the unconquered fierceness of this character is preferved in that due mediocrity, which nature and just juft writing demand. The poet, in giving her character, is content to fay of her, Βαρεῖα γὰρ φρὴν ἐδ' ανέξεται κακῶς And Δεινὴ γάρ. * τοι ῥᾳδίως γε συμβαλὼν Εχθράν τις αὐτῇ, καλλίνικον οἴσεται. And she herself, when opening to the chorus her laft horrid purpose, fays, fiercely indeed, but not frantically: Μηδείς με φαύλην κρἰσθενῆ νομιζέτω Μηδ' ήσυχαίαν. And this is nature, which Seneca not perceiving, and yet willing to write up to the critic's rule, hath outraged her character beyond all bounds, and, inftead of a refolute, revengeful woman, hath made of her a downright fury. Hence her paffion is wrought up to a greater height in the very firft scene of the Latin play, than it ever reaches in the Greek poet. The tenor of her language throughout is, invadam deos, Et cuncta quatiam. And hence, in particular, the third and fourth acts expose to our view all the horrors of forcery (and those too imaged to an extravagance) which Euripides, Euripides, with fo much better judgment, thought fit entirely to conceal. 126. SERVETUR AD IMUM QUALIS AB INCEPTO PROCESSERIT, ET SIBI CONSTET.] The rule is, as appears from the reafon of the thing, and from Ariftotle, "Let an uniformity of cha"racter be preferved, or at least a confiftency:" i.e. either let the manners be exactly the fame from the beginning to the end of the play, as thofe of Medea, for inftance, and Oreftes; or, if any change be neceffary, let it be fuch as may confift with, and be eafily reconciled to, the manners formerly attributed; as is feen in the cafe of Electra and Iphigenia. We should read then, it is plain, fervetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto procefferit, AUT fibi conftet. The mistake arofe from imagining, that a character could no other way confist with itself, but by being uniform. A miftake however, which as I faid, not the reafon of the thing only, but Ariftotle's rule might have fet right. It is exprefed thus: Τέταρτον δὲ τὸ ὁμαλόν. Καν γὰρ ανώμαλός τις ᾖ, ὁ τὴν μίμησιν παρέχων καὶ τοι τον ἦθος υποτιθεὶς, ὅμως ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλον δεῖ εἶναι· Hont. . . which laft words, having been not at all understood, have kept his interpreters from fecing the true fense and scope of the precept. For they have been explained of such characters as that of Tigellius in Horace; which, however proper for fatire, or for farcical comedy, are of too fantastic and whimfical a nature to be admitted into tragedy; of which Aristotle must there be chiefly understood to speak, and to which Horace, in this place, alone confines himfelf. It is true, indeed, it may be faid, that though a whimsical or fantastic character be "improper for tragedy, an irrefolute one is not. "Nothing is finer than a ftruggle between dif"ferent paffions; and it is perfectly natural, "that in fuch a circumftance, each fhould pre"vail by turns." But then there is the wideft difference between the two cafes. Tigellius, with all his fantastic irrefolution, is as uniform a character, as that of Mitio. If the expreffion may be allowed, its very inconfifiency is of the effence of its uniformity. On the other hand, Electra, torn with fundry conflicting paffions, is most apparently, and in the propereft notion of the word, ununiform. One of the ftrongest touches in her character is that of a high, heroic spirit, fenfible to her own and her family's injuries, and ́. determined, at any rate, to revenge them. Yet no fooner is this revenge perpetrated, than fhe softens, relents, and pities. Here is a manifeft ununiformity, which can, in no proper sense of the |