and the reverse when the second is superior. At least, if this is not what he means to assert and vindicate, I despair of being able to assign a meaning to the following expressions: "The genius required to paint,-the art employed in collecting,— the judgment displayed in disposing-diffuse the highest satisfaction on the audience, and excite the most delightful movements. By this means the uneasiness of the melancholy passions is not only overpowered and effaced by something stronger of an opposite kind, but the whole movement of those passions is converted into pleasure, and swells the delight which the eloquence raises in us." Again, "The impulse or vehemence arising from sorrow-receives a new direction from the sentiments of beauty. The latter being the predominant emotion, seize the whole mind, and convert the formerAgain, "The soul, being at the same time roused with passion and charmed by eloquence, feels on the whole- And in the paragraph immediately succeeding, "It is thus the fiction of tragedy softens the passion, by an infusion of a new feeling, not merely by weakening or diminishing the sorrowNow to me it is manifest, that this notion of two distinguishable, and even opposite effects, as he terms them, produced in the hearer by the eloquence, is perfectly imaginary; that, on the contrary, whatever charm or fascination, if you please to call it so, there is in the pity excited by the orator, it ariseth not from any extrinsic sentiment of beauty blended with it, but intimately from its own nature, from those passions which pity necessarily associates, or, I should rather say, includes.

But do we not often hear people speak of eloquence as moving them greatly, and pleasing them highly at the same time? Nothing more common. But these are never understood by them as two original, separate, and independent effects, but as essentially connected. Push your inquiries but ever so little, and you will find all agree in affirming, that it is by being moved, and by that solely, that they are pleased: in philosophical strictness, therefore, the pleasure is the immediate effect of the passion, and the passion the immediate effect of the eloquence.

But is there then no pleasure in contemplating the beauty of composition, the richness of fancy, the power of numbers, and the energy of expression? There is undoubtedly. But so far is this pleasure from commixing with the pathos, and giving a direction to it, that, on the contrary, they seem to be in a great measure incompatible. Such indeed is the pleasure which the artist or the critic enjoys, who can coolly and deliberately survey the whole; upon whose passions the art of the speaker hath little or no influence, and that purely for this reason, because he discovers that art. The bulk of hearers know no further than to approve the man who affects them, who speaks

to their heart, as they very properly and emphatically term it, and to commend the performance by which this is accomplished. But how it is accomplished, they neither give themselves the trouble to consider, nor attempt to explain'.

PART IV.-The fourth hypothesis.

Lastly, To mention only one other hypothesis; there are who maintain that compassion is "an example of unmixed selfishness and malignity," and may be "resolved into that power of imagination by which we apply the misfortunes of others to ourselves;" that we are said "to pity no longer than we fancy ourselves to suffer, and to be pleased only by reflecting that our sufferings are not real; thus indulging a dream of distress, from which we can awake whenever we please, to exult in our security, and enjoy the comparison of the fiction with truth."

This is no other than the antiquated doctrine of the philosopher of Malmesbury, rescued from oblivion, to which it had been fast descending, and republished with improvements. Hobbes indeed thought it a sufficient stretch, in order to render the sympathetic sorrow purely selfish, to define it, "imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity3." But in the first quotation we have another kind of fiction; namely, that we are at present the very sufferers ourselves, the identical persons whose cases are exhibited as being so deplorable, and whose calamities we so sincerely lament. There were some things hinted in the beginning of the chapter, in relation to this paradoxical conceit, which I should not have thought it necessary to resume, had it not been adopted by a late author, whose periodical

1 The inquiry contained in this chapter was written long before I had an opportuniry of perusing a very ingenious English commentary and notes on Horace's Epistles to the Pisos and to Augustus, in which Mr. Hume's sentiments on this subject are occasionally criticized. The opinions of that commentator, in regard to Mr. Hume's theory, coincide in every thing material with mine. This author considers the question no further than it relates to the representations of tragedy, and hath, by confining his view to this single point, been led to lay greater stress on Fontenelle's hypothesis than, for the solution of the general phenomenon, it is entitled to. It is very true that our theatrical entertainments commonly exhibit a degree of distress which we could not bear to witness in the objects represented. Consequently the consideration that it is but a picture, and not the original, a fictitious exhibition, and not the reality, which we contemplate, is essential for rendering the whole, I may say, supportable as well as pleasant. But even in this case, when it is necessary to our repose to consider the scenical misery before us as mere illusion, we are generally better pleased to consider the things represented as genuine fact. It requires, indeed, but a further degree of affliction to make us even pleased to think that the copy never had any archetype in nature. But when this is the case we may truly say, poet hath exceeded and wrought up pity to a kind of horror.

2 Adventurer, No. 110.

that the

3 Hum. Nat. chap. ix. sect. 10.

essays seemed to entitle him to the character of an ingenious, moral, and instructive writer. For though he hath declined entering formally into the debate, he hath sufficiently shown his sentiments on this article, and hath endeavoured indirectly to support them.

I doubt not that it will appear to many of my readers as equally silly to refute this hypothesis and to defend it. Nothing could betray reasonable men into such extravagances, but the dotage with which one is affected towards every appendage of a favourite system. And this is an appendage of that system which derives all the affections and springs of action in the human mind from self-love. In almost all systembuilders of every denomination, there is a vehement desire of simplifying their principles, and reducing all to one. Hence in medicine, the passion for finding a catholicon, or cure of all diseases; and in chemistry, for discovering the true alcahest, or universal dissolvent. Nor have our moralists entirely escaped the contagion. One reduceth all the virtues to prudence, and is ready to make it clear as sunshine that there neither is nor can be another source of moral good, but a right conducted self-love another is equally confident that all the virtues are but different modifications of disinterested benevolence: a third will demonstrate to you that veracity is the whole duty of man: a fourth, with more ingenuity, and much greater appearance of reason, assures you that the true system of ethics is comprised in one word, sympathy.

But to the point in hand: it appears a great objection to the selfish system, that in pity we are affected with a real sorrow for the sufferings of others, or at least that men have universally understood this to be the case, as appears from the very words and phrases expressive of this emotion to be found in all known languages. But to one who has thoroughly imbibed the principles and spirit of a philosophic sect, which hath commonly as violent an appetite for mystery (though under different name, for with the philosopher it is paradox) as any religious sect whatever, how paltry must an objection appear, which hath nothing to support it but the conviction of all mankind, those only excepted whose minds have been perverted by scholastic sophistry?

It is remarkable, that though so many have contended that some fiction of the imagination is absolutely necessary to the production of pity, and though the examples of this emotion are so frequent (I hope, in the theorists themselves no less than in others) as to give ample scope for examination, they are so little agreed what this fiction is. Some contend only, that in witnessing tragedy one is under a sort of momentary

4 Hawkesworth.

deception, which a very little reflection can correct, and imagines that he is actually witnessing those distresses and miseries which are only represented in borrowed characters, and that the actors are the very persons whom they exhibit. This supposition, I acknowledge, is the most admissible of all. That children and simple people, who are utter strangers to theatrical amusements, are apt at first to be deceived in this manner, is undeniable. That, therefore, through the magical power (if I may call it so) of natural and animated action, a transient illusion somewhat similar may be produced in persons of knowledge and experience, I will not take upon me to controvert. But this hypothesis is not necessarily connected with any particular theory of the passions. The persons for whom we grieve, whether the real objects or only their representatives mistaken for them, are still other persons, and not ourselves. Besides, this was never intended to account but for the degree of emotion in one particular case only.

Others, therefore, who refer every thing to self, will have it, that by a fiction of the mind we instantly conceive some future and similar calamity as coming upon ourselves; and that it is solely this conception, and this dread, which call forth all our sorrow and our tears. Others, not satisfied with this, maintain boldly, that we conceive ourselves to be the persons suffering the miseries related or represented, at the very instant that our pity is raised. When nature is deserted by us, it is no wonder that we should lose our way in the devious tracks of imagination, and not know where to settle.

The first would say, "When I see Garrick in the character of King Lear in the utmost agony of distress, I am so transported with the passions raised in my breast, that I quite forget the tragedian, and imagine that my eyes are fixed on that much injured and most miserable monarch." Says the second, "I am not in the least liable to so gross a blunder; but I cannot help, in consequence of the representation, being struck with the impression that I am soon to be in the same situation, and to be used with the like ingratitude and barbarity." Says the third, "The case is still worse with me; for I conceive myself, and not the player, to be that wretched man at the very time that he is acted. I fancy that I am actually in the midst of the storm, suffering all his anguish, that my daughters have turned me out of doors, and treated me with such unheard-of cruelty and injustice." It is exceeding lucky that there do not oftener follow terrible consequences from these misconceptions. It will be said, "They are transient, and quickly cured by recollection." But however transient, if they really exist, they must exist for some time. Now, if unhappily a man had two of his daughters sitting near him at the very instant he was under this delusion,

1

and if, by a very natural and consequential fiction, he fancied them to be Goneril and Regan, the effects might be fatal to the ladies, though they were the most dutiful children in the world.

It hath never yet been denied (for it is impossible to say what will be denied) that pity influences a person to contribute to relieve the object when it is in his power. But if there is a mistake in the object, there must of necessity be a mistake in the direction of the relief. For instance, you see a man perishing with hunger, and your compassion is raised; now you will pity no longer, say these acute reasoners, than you fancy yourself to suffer. You yourself properly are the sole object of your own pity, and as you desire to relieve the person only whom you pity, if there be any food within your reach, you will no doubt devour it voraciously, in order to allay the famine which you fancy you are enduring; but you will not give one morsel to the wretch who really needs your aid, but who is by no means the object of your regret, for whom you can feel no compunction, and with whose distress (which is quite a foreign matter to you) it is impossible you should be affected, especially when under the power of a passion consisting of unmixed selfishness and malignity. For though, if you did not pity him, you would, on cool reflection, give him some aid, perhaps from principle, perhaps from example, or perhaps from habit, unluckily this accursed pity, this unmixed malignant selfishness, interposeth, to shut your heart against him, and to obstruct the pious purpose.

I know no way of eluding this objection but one, which is indeed a very easy way. It is to introduce another fiction of the imagination, and to say, that when this emotion is raised, I lose all consciousness of my own existence and identity, and fancy that the pitiable object before me is my very self; and that the real I, or what I formerly mistook for myself, is some other body, a mere spectator of my misery, or perhaps nobody at all. Thus unknowingly I may contribute to his relief, when under the strange illusion which makes me fancy that, instead of giving to another, I am taking to myself. But if the man be scrupulously honest, he will certainly restore to me, when I am awake, what I gave him unintentionally in my sleep.

That such fictions may sometimes take place in madness, which almost totally unhinges our mental faculties, I will not dispute; but that such are the natural operations of the passions in a sound state, when the intellectual powers are unimpaired, is what no man would have ever either conceived or advanced, that had not a darling hypothesis to support. And by such arguments, it is certain that every hypothesis whatever may equally be supported. Suppose I have taken it into my