18. Hence Aristotle justly blames those tragic writers, who put, into the mouths of the personages of the drama, whining complaints of their own sufferings; of which he quotes two instances *; and of which, we have another now extant, in the Philoctetes of Sophocies; whose ulcerated foot and lamentations over it, howsoever just, expressive, and appropriate, would not be endured on any modern stage; not only, because the fiction is, in itself, offensive and disgusting, but because every expression or complaint of distress, that such a calamity can excite, must necessarily display some degree of this kind of selfish weakness; and consequently be unfit for tragedy; which çan properly exhibit only the energies of human nature. It matters not, indeed, whether these energies be displayed in passive, or active fortitude; in suffering or acting; in the mild and gentle, or the furious and impetuous passions and affections: but it is absolutely necessary that those passions and affections should be decisive and energetic; nor is any degree of coldness, weakness, or moderation at all more allowable in the tender loves of Romeo and Juliet, than in the atrocious ambition of Lady Macbeth. The instant the tone of expression is relaxed, the characters become comic, or at least cease to be tragic.

Poetic. f. xxviii.
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Of the Sublime and Pathetic.

CHAP.

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19. All sympathies, excited by just and

Of the Su- appropriate expression of energetic passion; blime and whether they be of the tender or violent kind,

Pathetic.

are alike sublime; as they all tend to expand and elevate the mind; and fill it with those enthusiastic raptures, which Longinus justly states to be the true feelings of sublimity. -Hence that author cites instances of sublime from the tenderest odes of love, as well as from the most terrific images of war; and with equal propriety: it not being with the particular love of Sappho, that we sympathize, in reading her beautiful and impassioned ode: for we neither know its object; nor, unless in love, do we substitute any particular one in the place of it; but we all feel the general sentiments of rapturous and enthusiastic affection, which are so warmly and energetically expressed; and the feelings, thus excited, are really and properly sublime, as well as pathetic; that is, highly elevated above every thing selfishly low or sordid: for the word sublime, both according to its use and etymology, must signify high or exalted; and, if an individual choose, that, in his writings, it should signify terrible, he only involves his meaning in a confusion of terms, which naturally leads to a confusion of ideas.

20. It is the rapture and enthusiasm of the expressions, and warmth and elevation of the sentiments, which makes the difference between

the erotic compositions of Sappho, Theocritus, and Otway; and those of Bafo, Lord Rochester, and Aretine. In the first, the sexual inclination is exalted into a generous heroic passion; which, when expressed with all the glowing energy and spirit of poetry, becomes truly sublime but, in the latter, it is degraded into sordid sensuality; which, how elegantly soever expressed, can never be exalted: for mere appetite is, in its nature, selfish, through all its gratifications, and cannot, therefore, be in any case, sublime *.

21. Not only love, however, but its opposite, hatred or malignity, may be sublime in poetry; as that of Shylock, in some scenes of Shakspeare, unquestionably is: not that malignity is a sublime passion: but that, in strong and powerful minds, such as that of Shylock is feigned to be, it is an energetic one; and, consequently, well adapted to excite sentiments and expressions of great and enthusiastic force and vigour; with which we sympathize,

* I am aware that the doctrine of Longinus, upon this. subject, has lately been censured by a critic of very high authority; (Blair, Lect. iv.) and attributed to a confusion of ideas: but it appears to me that all the confusion is in the critic himself; who, in this, as in many other instances, has confounded the effect of poetical description, or expression of a passion, with the effect of the passion itself; from which, it is widely different; as this author acknowledges in another part of his work,

СНАР.

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Of the Sublime and Pathetic.

CHAP.

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and not with the passion itself, which could

Of the Su- only excite odious and disgusting feelings; such blime and as every person would be disposed to shun, Pathetic. rather than to seek.

22. In like manner, it is not with the agonies of a man writhing in the pangs of death, that we sympathize, on beholding the celebrated group of Laocoon and his sons; for such sympathies can only be painful and disgusting; but it is with the energy and fortitude of mind, which those agonies call into action and display: for, though every feature and every muscle is convulsed, and every nerve contracted, yet the breast is expanded and the throat compressed to show that he suffers in silence. I therefore still maintain, in spite of the blind and indiscriminate admiration, which pedantry always shows for every thing, which bears the stamp of high authority, that Virgil has debased the character, and robbed it of all its sublimity and grandeur of expression, by making Laocoon roar like a bull*; and, I think, that I may safely affirm that, if any writer of tragedy were to make any one personage of his drama roar out in the same manner, on being mortally wounded, the whole audience would burst into laughter; how pa

* "Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit; Quales mugitus, fugit quum saucius aram Taurus, et incertam excussit cervice securim.”

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blime and. Pathetic.

thetic soever the incidents might be, that accompanied it. Homer has been so sensible of of the Suthis, that in the vast number and variety of deaths, which he has described, he has never made a single Greek cry out on receiving a mortal wound *. Even in the female character, no such display of weakness would be endured on the stage; nor could all the gentle innocence and amiable simplicity of Desdemona, have preserved the interest of the last scene, if, instead of supplicating for mercy, with the collected calmness of a strong, as well

*Those who trust to the Latin Versions and English Translations, may perhaps quote the God of War himself, when slightly wounded, bellowing with the pain; (Pope's Iliad, Book V. v. 1053;) but the verb in the original is one never employed to express the voice either of man or animal; and merely signifies the crash or rattling of his armour, as he mounts in violent agitation to Heaven.

Pope has rendered the same verb, when applied to the wounded horse in the XVIth Iliad rightly, though diffusely:

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th' entangled harness broke; Each axle crackled, and the chariot shook.

Cowper has followed, as usual, the vulgar Latin in both t passages; except that in the first he has taken the word bellow from Pope; and if he had studiously sought to debase the sublime imagery of the Poet to a level with that of his own "John Gilpin," as his translation sometimes inclines us to suspect, he could not have found one better adapted to his purpose.