On Tragical Representations. 325 
evanescent, the pleasureable' one ought to be 
nearly unmixed ; ‘if the painful’ one be then at 
its height,’ the sensatron .of pleasure must be 
hardly perceivable,* and cannot, methinks, ac- 
count for the interest which we have in the re- 
presentation. For the feelings, during a tragical 
representation, are not of this dubious and: inde- 
terminate character; the pain’ and’'the pleasure, 
if we must give the denomination of pleasure to 
the interest which we have in the spectacle, ‘are 
distinct, and at'the same moment are each ‘highly 
exquisite. There is, m truth, no passing of the 
one into the other. . 
It is a farther objection to the theory of 
Fontenelle, that he has assigned no proper source 
of pleasure, which can give its complexion to the 
pain ; the circumstance which he has noticed is 
merely an alleviation, and can only account for 
a diminution of the pain. This circumstance of 
the whole being but a fiction, has exceedingly 
little, if any, influence in softening and alleviat- 
ing our painful sensation ; though it be true, that 
if it were a spectacle of real misery, we should 
be repelled from approaching it at all. But it is 
also true, that the more the fiction is kept out of 
view, the more perfect is the art of the poet, and 
the more perfect the effect of the imitation upon 
the mind of the spectator ; whose interest rises to 
its greatest height, when, by a kind of divine 
power, he is carried entirely out of the consider- 
