in sentiments that partake of the same vibration. This I give as a third observation: Queen. Would I had ne'er trod this English earth, Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it! Ye've angels' faces, but heaven knows your hearts. I am the most unhappy woman living. Alas! poor wenches, where are now your fortunes? [To her women. No friends, no hope! no kindred weep for me! Othello. Oh devil, devil! Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 1. If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. Out of my sight! Desdemona. I will not stay t offend you. [Going. I do beseech your lordship, call her back. Oth. Mistress Des. My lord. Oth. What would you with her, sir? Lud. Who, I, my lord? Oth. Aye; you did wish that I would make her turn: Sir, she can turn and turn, and yet go on; And turn again. And she can weep, sir, weep: I'll send for you anon-sir, I obey the mandate, And will return to Venice.-Hence, avaunt! [Exit Desdemona. Othello, Act IV. Sc. 6. Emilia. Oh, my good lord, I would speak a word with you. 'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death: The noise was high-Ha! no more moving? Still as the grave. Shall she come in? were't good? If she come in, she'll sure speak to my wife; My wife! my wife! What wife? I have no wife; Oh, insupportable! Oh, heavy hour!-Othello, Act IV. Sc. 7. 382. A fourth observation is, That nature, which gave us passions, and made them extremely beneficial when moderate, intended undoubtedly that they should be subjected to the government of reason and conscience. (See chap. ii. part vii.) It is therefore against the order of nature, that passion in any case should take the lead in contradiction to reason and conscience: such a state of mind is a sort of anarchy, which every one is ashamed of, and endeavors to hide or dissemble. Even love, however laudable, is attended with a conscious shame when it becomes immoderate: it is covered from the world, and disclosed only to the beloved object: Et que l'amour souvent de remors combattu, Boileau, L'art Poet. Chant. iii. 1. 101. 881 The mind, agitated at once by different passions.-Henry VIII.-Othello. Ja, fiey love least that let me know their love. Two Gatimes of Verona, Act L. Sc. 3. Evoy a moni me in the representation of immoderate passions, man mer ågon to be bil v disented as much as possible. And the bouts in an espesi manner with respect to criminal passions: the lever homses the occuisson of a crime in plain terms: guilt But at pear is native eclors, even in thought; the proposal met be made by lins, and by representing the action in some favincenes of the propriety of sentiment upon such an occasion, Shakspeare in the Teligent has given us a beautiful example, in a spewed by the warping Ike of Milan, advising Sebastian to murder is inden de King (Naples: There never was in a me complete picture of this kind, than mat of King Jiin sulffing Hubert to murder the young Prince AZT: Making to st but let it go; aven: and the prond day, 13 ton fal of gawds, tae. Ifte midnight bell sima tome 2n-1 brazen mouth que drowsy race of night; were a church-yard where we stand, 3. and ma ie it heavy-thick, train their cuecas to idle inerriment, A passion Lateful to my purposes; We ofthat then eralist see me without eyes, B: es, e 25, and ì, rmful sounds of words; vusela : out my thoughts. And by my trod, I think thou lovest me well. Hubert. So well, that what you bid me undertake, K. John. Do not I know thou wouldst? And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, King John, Act III. Sc. 5. X 383. As things are best illustrated by their contraries, I proceed to faulty sentiments, disdaining to be indebted for examples to any but the most approved authors. The first class shall consist of sentiments that accord not with the passion; or, in other words, sentiments that the passion does not naturally suggest. In the second class shall be ranged sentiments that may belong to an ordinary passion, but unsuitable to it as tinctured by a singular character. Thoughts that properly are not sentiments, but rather descriptions, make a third. Sentiments that belong to the passion represented, but are faulty as being introduced too early or too late, make a fourth. Vicious sentiments exposed in their native dress, instead of being concealed or disguised, make a fifth. And in the last class shall be collected sentiments suited to no character or passion, and therefore unnatural. 384. The first class contains faulty sentiments of various kinds, which I shall endeavor to distinguish from each other; beginning with sentiments that are faulty by being above the tone of the passion: Othello. -O my soul's joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken'd death! And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas As hell's from heaven. Othello, Act II. Sc. 6. This sentiment may be suggested by violent and inflamed passion, but is not suited to the calm satisfaction that one feels upon escaping danger. Philaster. Place me, some god, upon a pyramid Philaster of Beaumont and Fletcher, Act IV. 385. Second. Sentiments below the tone of the passion. Ptolemy, by putting Pompey to death, having incurred the displeasure of Cæsar, was in the utmost dread of being dethroned: in that agitating situation, Corneille makes him utter a speech full of cool reflection, that is in no degree expressive of the passion: 3S2. Passion should be subjected to reason and conscience.-The feeling that attends the immoderate indulgence of passion.-Rule for representing immoderate passions. Examples from the Tempest, &c. 883. Faulty sentiments: those that do not accord with the passion, &c. 884. Sentiments above the tone of the passion. Othello, &c. Ah! si je t'avois crú, je n'aurois pas de maître, Le plonge dans une gouffre, et puis s'évanouit. La Morte de Pompée, Act IV. Sc. 1. In Les Frères ennemis of Racine, the second act is opened with a love-scene: Hemon talks to his mistress of the torments of absence, of the lustre of her eyes, that he ought to die nowhere but at her feet, and that one moment of absence is a thousand years. Antigone, on her part, acts the coquette: pretends she must be gone to wait on her mother and brother, and cannot stay to listen to his courtship. This is odious French gallantry, below the dignity of the passion of love it would be excusable in painting modern French manners; and is insufferable where the ancients are brought upon the stage. 386. Third. Sentiments that agree not with the tone of the passion; as where a pleasant sentiment is grafted upon a painful passion, or the contrary. In the following instances the sentiments are too gay for a serious passion: Again: No happier task these faded eyes pursue; Eloisa to Abelard, 1. 47. Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid, They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires, Eloisa to Abelard, 1. 51. These thoughts are pretty: they suit Pope, but not Eloisa. Satan, enraged by a threatening of the angel Gabriel, answers thus: Then when I am thy captive, talk of chains, Far heavier load thyself expect to feel From my prevailing arm, though Heaven's King Paradise Lost, Book iv. The concluding epithet forms a grand and delightful image, which cannot be the genuine offspring of rage. 885. Sentiments below the tone of the passion Ptolemy's speech. 886. Sentiments that agree not with the tone of the passion, as to gayety or seriousEloise to Abelard, &c. ness. 251 387. Fourth. Sentiments too artificial for a serious passion. I give for the first example a speech of Percy expiring: O Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my growth; I better brook the loss of brittle life, Than those proud titles thou hast won of me; They wound my thoughts, worse than thy sword my flesh. And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. First Part of Henry IV. Act V. Sc. 9. The sentiments of the Mourning Bride are, for the most part, no less delicate than just copies of nature: in the following exception the picture is beautiful, but too artful to be suggested by severe grief: Almeria. O no! Time gives increase to my afflictions. The circling hours, that gather all the woes Which are diffused through the revolving year, The sighs, the tears, the groans, the restless cares, Act I. Sc. 1. In the same play, Almeria seeing a dead body, which she took to be Alphonso's, expresses sentiments strained and artificial, which nature suggests not to any person upon such an occasion: Had they or hearts or eyes, that did this deed? Could eyes endure to guide such cruel hands? That thus can gaze, and yet not turn to stone? All things were well; and yet my husband's murder'd! Act V. Sc. 11. Lady Trueman. How could you be so cruel to defer giving me that joy which you knew I must receive from your presence? You have robbed my life of some hours of happiness that ought to have been in it.-Drummer, Act V. Pope's Elegy to the memory of an unfortunate lady, expresses delicately the most tender concern and sorrow that one can feel for the deplorable fate of a person of worth. Such a poem, deeply serious and pathetic, rejects with disdain all fiction. Upon that account, the following passage deserves no quarter; for it is not the language of the heart, but of the imagination indulging its flights at ease, and by that means is eminently discordant with the subject. It would be a still more severe censure, if it should be ascribed to imitation, copying indiscreetly what has been said by others: What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace, |