the contrary, it expels them altogether, and leaves not in the mind, for some time at least, another idea or reflection but what concerns personal safety. On the other hand, if all the sympathetic affections excited by the theatrical representation were to be severally enumerated, I cannot see why hope, indignation, love and hatred, gratitude and resentment, should not be included as well as fear. To account, then, for the pleasure which we find in pity, is, in a great measure, to give a solution of the question under review. I do not say that this will satisfy in every case. On the contrary, there are many cases in which the Abbé du Bos's account above recited, of the pleasure arising from the agitation and fluctuation of the passions, is the only solution that can be given. My sixth and last observation on this head is, that pity is not a simple passion, but a group of passions strictly united by association, and, as it were, blended by centring in the same object. Of these some are pleasant, some painful; commonly the pleasant preponderate. It hath been remarked already, that love attracts benevolence, benevolence quickens sympathy. The same attraction takes place inversely, though not, perhaps, with equal strength. Sympathy engages benevolence, and benevolence love. That benevolence, or the habit of wishing happiness to another, from whatever motive it hath originally sprung, will at length draw in love, might be proved from a thousand instances. In the party divisions which obtain in some countries, it often happens that a man is at first induced to take a side purely from a motive of interest; for some time, from this motive solely, he wishes the success of the party with which he is embarked. From a habit of wishing this, he will continue to wish it when, by a change of circumstances, his own interest is no longer connected with it; nay, which is more strange, he will even contract such a love and attachment to the party as to promote their interest in direct opposition to his own. That commiseration or sympathy in wo hath still a stronger tendency to engage our love is evident. This is the only rational account that can be given why mothers of a humane disposition generally love most the sickliest child in the family, though perhaps far from being the loveliest in respect either of temper or of other qualities. The habit of commiseration habituates them to the feeling and exertion of benevolence. Benevolence habitually felt and exerted confirms and augments their love. Nothing," says Mr. Hume,* "endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence." Distress to the pitying eye diminishes every Essay on Tragedy. fault, and sets off every good quality in the brightest colours. Nor is it a less powerful advocate for the mistress than for the friend: often does the single circumstance of misfortune subdue all resentment of former coldness and ill usage, and make a languid and dying passion revive and flame out with a violence which it is impossible any longer to withstand. Everybody acknowledges that beauty is never so irresistible as in tears. Distress is commonly sufficient with those who are not very hard-hearted or pitiless (for these words are nearly of the same import) to make even enmity itself relent. There are, then, in pity, these three different emotions: first, commiseration, purely painful; secondly, benevolence, or a desire of the relief and happiness of the object pitied — a passion, as was already observed, of the intermediate kind; thirdly, love, in which is always implied one of the noblest and most exquisite pleasures whereof the soul is susceptible, and which is itself, in most cases, sufficient to give a counterpoise of pleasure to the whole. For the farther confirmation of this theory, let it be remarked, that orators and poets, in order to strengthen this association and union, are at pains to adorn the character of him for whom they would engage our pity with every amiable quality which, in a consistency with probability, they can crowd into it. On the contrary, when the character is haterul, the person's misfortunes are unpitied. Sometimes they even occasion a pleasure of a very different kind, namely, that which the mind naturally takes in viewing the just punishment of demerit. When the character hath such a mixture of good and odious qualities as that we can neither withhold our commiseration nor bestow our love, the mind is then torn opposite ways at once by passions which, instead of uniting, repel one another. Hence the piece becomes shocking and disgustful. Such, to a certain degree, in my judgment, the tragedy of Venice Preserved, wherein the hero, notwithstanding several good qualities, is a villain and a traitor, will appear to every well-disposed mind. All the above cases, if attended to, will be found exactly to tally with the hypothesis here suggested. All the answer, then, which I am able to produce upon the whole, and which results from the foregoing observations, is this: The principal pleasure in pity ariseth from its own nature, or from the nature of those passions of which it is compounded, and not from anything extrinsic or adventitious. The tender emotions of love which enter into the composition, sweeten the commiseration or sympathetic sorrow; the commiseration gives a stability to those emotions, with which otherwise the mind would soon be cloyed, when directed towards a person imaginary, unknown, or with whom we are totally unacquainted. The very benevolence or wish of contributing to his relief affords an occupation to the thoughts which agreeably rouses them. It impels the mind to devise expedients by which the unhappy person (if our pity is excited by some present calamitous incident) may be, or (if it is awakened by the art of the poet, the orator, or the historian) might have been, relieved from his distress. Yet the whole movement of the combined affections is not converted into pleasure; for though the uneasiness of the melancholy passions be overpowered, it is not effaced by something stronger of an opposite kind. Mr. Hume, indeed, in his manner of expressing himself on this article, hath not observed either an entire uniformity or his usual precision. I should rather say, from some dubiousness in relation to the account he was giving, he seems to have, in part, retracted what he had been establishing, and thus leaves the reader with an alternative in the decision. First he tells us that "the whole movement of those [melancholy] passions is converted into pleasure." Afteward, "the latter [the sentiments of beauty] being the predominant emotion, seize the whole mind, and convert the former [the impulse or vehemence arising from sorrow, compassion, indignation] into themselves;" he adds, by way of correction, "or, at least, tincture them so strongly as totally to alter their nature." Again: "The soul feels, on the whole, a strong movement, which is altogether delightful." All this, I acknowledge, appears to me to be neither sufficiently definite nor quite intelligible. But, passing that, I shall only subjoin, that the combination of the passions in the instance under our examination is not like the blending of colours, two of which will produce a third, wherein you can discern nothing of the original hues united in producing it; but it rather resembles a mixture of tastes, when you are quite sensible of the different savours of the ingredients. Thus, blue and yellow mingled make green, in which you discover no tint of either; and all the colours of the rainbow, blended, constitute a white, which to the eye appears as simple and original as any of them, and perfectly unlike to each. On the other hand, in eating meat with salt, for instance, we taste both distinctly; and though the latter singly would be disagreeable, the former is rendered more agreeable by the mixture than it would otherwise have been. I own, indeed, that certain adventitious circumstances may contribute to heighten the effect. But these cannot be regarded as essential to the passion. They occur occasionally. Some of them actually occur but seldom. Of this sort is the satisfaction which ariseth from a sense of our own ease and security, compared with the calamity and the danger of another. Q ""Tis pleasant safely to behold from shore The moving legions mingled in the war."* The poet hath hit here on some of the very few circumstances in which it would be natural to certain tempers, not surely the most humane, to draw comfort in the midst of sympa'thetic sorrow from such a comparison. The reflection, in my opinion, occurs almost only when a very small change in external situation, as a change in place, to the distance of a few furlongs, would put us into the same lamentable circumstances which we are commiserating in others. Even something of this kind will present itself to our thoughts when there is no particular object to demand our pity. A man who, in tempestuous weather, sits snug in a close house, near a good fire, and hears the wind and rain beating upon the roof and windows, will naturally think of his own comfortable situation compared with that of a traveller, who, perhaps, far from shelter, is exposed to all the violence of the tempest. But in such cases, a difference, as I said, in a single accidental circumstance, which may happen at any time, is all that is necessary to put a man in the same disastrous situation wherein he either sees or conceives others to be; and the very slightness of the circumstance which would have been sufficient to reverse the scene, makes him so ready to congratulate with himself on his better luck; whereas nothing is less natural, and, I will venture to say, less common than such a reflection, when the differences are many, and of a kind which cannot be reckoned merely accidental, as when the calamity is what the person pitying must consider himself as not liable to, or in the remotest hazard of. A man who, with the most undissembled compassion, bewails the wretched and undeserved fate of Desdemona, is not apt to think of himself, how fortunate he is in not being the wife of a credulous, jealous, and revengeful husband, though perhaps a girl who hath lately rejected a suiter of this character will reflect with great complacency on the escape she has made. Another adventitious source of pleasure is the satisfaction that results from the conscious exercise of the humane affections, which it is our duty to cherish and improve. I mention this as adventitious, because, though not unnatural, I do * "Suave mari magno, terbantibus æquora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem. Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas, Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli." LUCRET., i., 2. not imagine that the sensations of sympathetic sorrow, either always or immediately, give rise to this reflection. Children, and even savages, are susceptible of pity, who think no more of claiming any merit to themselves on this score than they think of claiming merit from their feeling the natural appetites of hunger and thirst. Nay, it is very possible that persons may know its power and sweetness too, when, through the influence of education and bad example, they consider it as a weakness or blemish in their disposition, and, as such, endeavour to conceal and stifle it. A certain degree of civilization seems to be necessary to make us thoroughly sensible of its beauty and utility, and, consequently, that it ought to be cultivated. Bigotry may teach a man to think inhumanity, in certain circumstances, a virtue; yet nature will reclaim, and may make him, in spite of the dictates of a misguided conscience, feel all the tenderness of pity to the heretic, who, in his opinion, has more than merited the very worst that can be inflicted on him. I acknowledge that, on the other hand, when the sentiment comes generally to prevail that compassion is in itself praiseworthy, it may be rendered a source of much more self-satisfaction to the vainglorious than reasonably it ought to yield. Such persons gladly lay hold of every handle which serves to raise them in their own esteem; and I make no doubt that several, from this very motive, have exalted this principle as immoderately as others have vilified it. Every good man will agree that this is the case when people consider it as either a veil for their vices, or an atonement for the neglect of their duty. For my own part, I am inclined to think that those who are most ready to abuse it thus are not the most remarkable for any exercise of it by which society can be profited. There is a species of deception in the case which it is not beside the purpose briefly to unravel. It hath been observed that sense invariably makes a stronger impression than memory, and memory a stronger than imagination; yet there are particular circumstances which appear to form an exception, and to give an efficacy to the ideas of imagination beyond what either memory or sense can boast. So great is the anomaly which sometimes displays itself in human characters, that it is not impossible to find persons who are quickly made to cry at seeing a tragedy or reading a romance which they know to be fictions, and yet are both inattentive and unfeeling in respect to the actual objects of compassion who live in their neighbourhood and are daily under their eye. Nevertheless, this is an exception from the rule more in appearance than in reality. The cases are not parallel: there are certain circumstances which obtain in the one and have no place in the other, and to these |