novelty. One who has been witness to a dozen diffections, and as many amputations, fees, ever after, all operations of this kind with great indifference, and often with perfect infenfibility. Though we have read or feen represented more than five hundred tragedies, we fhall feldom feel fo entire an abatement of our sensibility to the objects which they represent to us.

In fome of the Greek tragedies there is an attempt to excite compaffion, by the reprefentation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his fufferings. Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the feverest tortures, which, it feems, even the fortitude of Hercules was incapable of fupporting. In all these cafes, however, it is not the pain which interefts us, but fome other circumftance. It is not the fore foot, but the folitude, of Philoctetes which affects us, and diffufes over that charming tragedy, that romantic wildness, which is fo agreeable to the imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interefting only because we foresee that death is to be the confequence. If thofe heroes were to recover, we should think the reprefentation of their fufferings perfectly ridiculous. What a tragedy would that be of which the diftrefs confifted in a cholic. Yet no pain is more exquifite. These attempts to excite compaffion by the reprefentation of bodily pain, may be regarded as

among

among the greatest breaches of decorum of which the Greek theatre has fet the example.

The little fympathy which we feel with bodily pain is the foundation of the propriety of conftancy and patience in enduring it. The man, who under the fevereft tortures allows no weakness to escape him, vents no groan, gives way to no paffion which we do not entirely enter into, commands our highest admiration. His firmnefs enables him to keep time with our indifference and infenfibility. We admire and intirely go along with the magnanimous effort which he makes for this purpose. We approve of his behaviour, and from our experience of the common weaknefs of human nature, we are furprised, and wonder how he fhould be able to act fo as to deferve approbation. Approbation, mixed and animated by wonder and furprize, conftitutes the fentiment which is properly called admiration, of which, applause is the natural expreffion, as has already been observed.

CHA P. II.

Of thofe paffions which take their origin from a particular turn or habit of the imagination.

E

VEN of the paffions derived from the imagination, those which take their origin from a peculiar turn or habit it has acquired,

acquired, though they may be acknowledged to be perfectly natural, are, however, but little fympathifed with. The imaginations of mankind, not having acquired that particular turn, cannot enter into them; and fuch paffions, though they may be allowed. to be almost unavoidable in fome part of life, are always in fome measure ridiculous. This is the cafe with that ftrong attachment which naturally grows up between two perfons of different fexes, who have long fixed their thoughts upon one another. Our imanation not having run in the fame channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter into the eagerness of his emotions. If our friend has been injured, we readily fympathise with his refentment, and grow angry with the very perfon with whom he is angry. If he has received a benefit, we readily enter into his gratitude, and have a very high sense of the merit of his benefactor. But if he is in love, though we may think his passion just as reasonable as any of the kind, yet we never think ourselves bound to conceive a paffion of the fame kind, and for the fame person for whom he has conceived it. The paffion appears to every body, but the man who feels it, entirely difproportioned to the value of the object; and love, though it is pardoned in a certain age because we know it is natural, is always laughed at, because we cannot enter into it. All ferious and ftrong expreffions of it appear ridiculous to a third perfon; and if

the

the lover is not good company to his mistress, he is to no body elfe. He himself is fenfible of this; and as long as he continues in his fober fenfes, endeavours to treat his own paffion with raillery and ridicule. It is the only ftile in which we care to hear of it; because it is the only ftile in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it. We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, and long-fentenced love of Cowley and Propertius, who never have done with exaggerating the violence of their attachments; but the gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, are always agreeable.

But though we feel no proper fympathy with an attachment of this kind, though we never approach even in imagination towards conceiving a paffion for that particular person, yet as we either have conceived, or may be difpofed to conceive, paffions of the fame kind, we readily enter into thofe high hopes of happiness which are propofed from its gratification, as well as into that exquisite distress which is feared from its difappointment. It interests us not as a paffion, but as a situation that gives occafion to other paffions which interests us; to hope, to fear, and to distress of every kind in the farne manner as in a defcription of a sea voyage, it is not the hunger which interests us, but the diftrefs which that hunger occafions. Though we do not properly enter into the attachment of the lover, we readily go along with thofe expectations of romantic happiness which he derives

from

from it. We feel how natural it is for the mind, in a certain fituation, relaxed with indolence, and fatigued with violence of defire, to long for ferenity and quiet, to hope to find them in the gratification of that paffion which diftracts it, and to frame to itself the idea of that life of paftoral tranquillity and retirement which the elegant, the tender, and the paffionate Tibullus takes fo much pleasure in defcribing; a life like what the poets describe in the Fortunate Iflands, a life of friendship, liberty, and repofe; free from labour, and from care, and from all the turbulent paffions which attend them. Even fcenes of this kind intereft us moft, when they are painted rather as what is hoped, than as what is enjoyed. The groffnefs of that paffion, which mixes with, and is, perhaps, the foundation of love, difappears when its gratification is far off and at a diftance; but renders the whole offenfive, when described as what is immediately poffeffed. The happy passion, upon this account, interefts us much lefs than the fearful and the melancholy. We tremble for whatever can disappoint íuch natural and agreeable hopes and thus enter into all the anxiety, and concern, and distress of the lo

ver.

Hence it is, that, in fome modern tragedies and romances, this paffion appears fo wonderfully interefting. It is not fo much -the love of Caftalio and Monimia which attaches us in the Orphan, as the diftrefs which that