MI.<^CELLANEOTJS. 393 



gedy is a pleasing sorrow, a modulated pain. David 

 Hume, who has also written upon this subject, unites the 

 two systems, with this addition, tliat the painful emotions 

 excited by the representation of melancholy scenes are fur- 

 ther tempered, and the pleasure is proportionably height- 

 ened, by the eloquence displayed in the relation, the art 

 shown in collecting the pathetic circumstances, and the 

 judgment evinced in their happy disposition. 



But even now I do not conceive the ditficulty to be sa- 

 tisfactorily done away. Admitting the postulatum which 

 the Abbe Du Bos assumes, that languor is so disagree- 

 able to the mind as to render its removal positive plea- 

 sure, to be true ; yet, when we recollect, as Mr Hume has 

 before observed, that were the same objects of distress 

 which give us pleasure in tragedy set before our eyes in 

 reality, though they would eifectually remove listlessness, 

 they would excite the most unfeigned uneasiness, we shall 

 hesitate in applying this solution in its full extent to the 

 present subject. M. Fontenelle's reasoning is much more 

 conclusive ; yet I think he errs egregiously in his pre- 

 mises, if he means to imply that any modulation of pain 

 is pleasing, because, in whatever degree it may be, it is 

 still pain, and remote from either ease or positive plea- 

 sure : and if by moderated pain he means an uneasy sen- 

 sation abated, though not totally banished, he is no less 

 mistaken in the application of them to the subject before 

 us. Pleasure may very well be conceived to be painful 

 when carried to excess, because it there becomes exertion, 

 and is inconvenient. We may also form some idea of a 

 pleasure arising from moderated pain, or the transition 

 from the disagreeable to the less disagreeable ; but this 

 cannot in any wise be applied to the gratification we de- 

 rive from a tragedy, for there no superior degree of pain 

 is felt for an inferior. As to Mr Hume's addition of the 

 pleasure we derive from the art of the poet, for the intro- 

 duction of which he has written his whole dissertation on 

 tragedy, it merits little consideration. The self-recol- 

 lection necessary to render this art a source of gratifica- 

 tion must weaken the illusion ; and whatever weakens the 

 illusion, diminishes the effect. 



