cause our imaginations can more readily mould upon his imagination, than our bodies can n selves upon his body.

The loss of a leg may generally be regarded real calamity than the loss of a mistress. It ridiculous tragedy, however, of which the cata to turn upon a loss of that kind. A misfortune kind, how frivolous soever it may appear to be. occasion to many a fine one."

Nothing is so soon forgot as pain. The m gone, the whole agony of it is over, and the th can no longer give us any sort of disturbance. selves cannot then enter into the anxiety a which we had before conceived. An unguarded a friend will occasion a more durable uneasin agony which this creates is by no means ove word. What at first disturbs us is not the ob senses, but the idea of the imagination. As it therefore, which occasions our uneasiness, till other accidents have in some measure effaced it memory, the imagination continues to fret a within, from the thought of it.

Pain never calls forth any very lively sympat it is accompanied with danger. We sympathiz fear, though not with the agony, of the suffer however, is a passion derived altogether from the tion, which represents, with an uncertainty and that increases our anxiety, not what we really feel we may hereafter possibly suffer. The gout or ache, though exquisitely painful, excite very litt thy; more dangerous diseases, though accompa very little pain, excite the highest.

Some people faint and grow sick at the sight of a chirurgical operation; and that bodily pain which is occasioned by tearing the flesh, seems, in them, to excite the most excessive sympathy. We conceive in a much more lively and distinct manner the pain which proceeds from an external cause, than we do that which arises from an internal disorder. I can scarce form an idea of the agonies of my neighbour when he is tortured with the gout, or the stone; but I have the clearest conception of what he must suffer from an incision, a wound, or a fracture. The chief cause, however, why such objects produce such violent effects upon us, is their novelty. One who has been witness to a dozen dissections, and as many amputations, sees, ever after, all operations of this kind with great indiffer. ence, and often with perfect insensibility. Though we have read, or seen represented, more than five hundred tragedies, we shall seldom feel so entire an abatement of our sensibility to the objects which they represent to us.

In some of the Greek tragedies there is an attempt to excite compassion, by the representation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his sufferings. Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the severest tortures, which it seems, even the fortitude of Hercules was incapable of supporting. In all these cases, however, it is not the pain which interests us, but some other circumstance. It is not the sore foot, but the solitude of Philoctetes which affects us, and diffuses over that charming tragedy, that romantic wildness, which is so agreeable to the imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interesting only because we foresee that death is to be the consequence. If those heroes were to recover, we should think the representation of their sufferings perfectly ridiculous. What a tragedy would that be, of which the distress consisted in a colic! Yet no pain is more exquisite. These attempts

to excite compassion by the representation of bodily pain, may be regarded as among the greatest breaches of decorum of which the Greek theatre has set the example.

The little sympathy which we feel with bodily pain is the foundation of the propriety of constancy and patience in enduring it. The man who under the severest tortures, allows no weakness to escape him, vents no groan, gives way to no passion which we do not entirely enter into, commands our highest admiration. His firmness enables him to keep time with our indifference and insensibility. We admire and entirely go along with the magnanimous effort which he makes for this purpose. We approve of his behaviour, and from our experience of the common weakness of human nature, we are surprised, and wonder how he should be able to act so as to deserve approbation. Approbation mixed and animated by wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called admiration, of which applause is the natural expression, as has already been observed.

CHAPTER II.

Of those Passions which take their origin from a particular turn or habit of the Imagination.

EVEN of the passions derived from the imagination, those which take their origin from a peculiar turn or habit it has acquired, though they may be acknowledged to be perfectly natural, are, however, but little sympathized with. The imaginations of mankind, not having acquired that particular turn, cannot enter into them; and such passions, though they may be allowed to be almost unavoidable in some part of life, are always in some measure ridiculous. This is the case with that strong attachment which naturally grows up between two persons of different sexes, who have long fixed their thoughts upon one another. Our imagination not having run in the same channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter into the eagerness of his emotions. If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathize with his resentment, and grow angry with the very person 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 passion of the same kind, and for the same person for whom he has conceived it. The passion appears to every body, but the man who feels it, entirely disproportioned 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 serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person; and though a lover may be good company to his mistress, he is so to nobody else. He himself is sensible of this; and as

long as he continues in his sober senses, end treat his own passion with railery and ridicule. only style in which we care to hear of it; becau only style in which we ourselves are disposed to We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, and long love of Cowley and Petrarca, who never have exaggerating the violence of their attachments gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, agreeable.

But though we feel no proper sympathy with ment of this kind, though we never approach eve gination towards conceiving a passion for that person, yet as we either have conceived, or may ed to conceive, passions of the same kind, we rea into those high hopes of happiness which are from its gratification, as well as into that exquisi which is feared from its disappointment. It in not as a passion, but as a situation that gives o other passions which interest us; to hope, to fea distress of every kind: in the same manner as in tion of a sea voyage, it is not the hunger which in but the distress which that hunger occasions. Th do not properly enter into the attachment of the readily go along with those expectations of roma piness which he derives from it. We feel how is for the mind, in a certain situation, relaxed wi lence, and fatigued with the violence of desire, to serenity and quiet, to hope to find them in the gra of that passion which distracts it, and to frame to idea of that life of pastoral tranquillity and re which the elegant, the tender, and the passionate takes so much pleasure in describing; a life like v poets describe in the Fortunate islands, a life of fri liberty, and repose; free from labour, and from c from all the turbulent passions which attend them.