392 HENRY KIRKE WHITE S REMAIN?. 



" pnt tliefinuhing ^troTce to if until I7o0. The " Plea- 

 sures of Melancholy" were pul3lished in 4to, in 1747. 

 Therefore Gray might take his third stanza from War- 

 ton ; but it is rather extraordinary that the third stanza 

 of a poem should be taken from another published Jive 

 years after that poem was begun, and three after it was 

 understood to be completed. One circumstance, however, 

 seems to render the supposition of its being a plagiarism 

 somewhat more probable, which is, that the stanza in ques- 

 tion is not essential to the connection of the preceding and 

 antecedent verses; therefore it might have been added 

 by Gray, when he put the " finishing stroke'' to his piece 

 in 17o0. 



CURSORY REMARKS ON TRAGEDY. 



The pleasure which is derived from the representation 

 of an affecting tragedy has often been the subject of in- 

 quiry among philosophical critics, as a singular pheno- 

 menon. That the mind should receive gratification from 

 the excitement of those passions which are in themselves 

 painful, is really an extraordinary paradox, and it is the 

 more inexplicable since, when the same means are em- 

 ployed to rouse the more pleasing affections, no adequate 

 effect is produced. 



In order to solve this problem, many ingenious hypo- 

 theses have been invented. The Abbe Du Bos tells us 

 that the mind has such a natural antipathy to a state of 

 listlessness and languor, as to render the transition from 

 it to a state of exertion, even though by rousing passions 

 in themselves painful, as in the instance of a tragedy, a 

 positive pleasure. Monsieur Fontenelle has given us a 

 more satisfactory account. He tells us that pleasure and 

 pain, two sentiments so different in themselves, do not 

 differ so much in their cause ; — that pleasure carried too 

 f^ir becomes pain, and pain a little moderated becomes 

 pleasure. Hence that the pleasure we derive from tra- 



