OF THE PASSIONS). 



517 



history appeared in no other form than that of poetical tales. At this lime, 

 however, science began to rear her head through the regions of Arcadia ; 

 the judgment acquired daily strength ; and, while a soberer style was found 

 to be befitting the severer studies, and the simple narrative of national or 

 biographical events, the dialect of the passions was limited to those 

 branches of speech or writing which require ornament, attraction, or an 

 excitement of the passions themselves : and by such a change verbal com- 

 position soon rose to the rank of a very extensive and complicated science ; 

 the value of every word became weighed in its root, combinations, and in- 

 flections ; in its strict and figurative senses ; in its proper enunciation and 

 accent. And hence the origin of the elementary studies of etymology, 

 grammar, prosody, and criticism ; while the general mint of language, 

 thus prepared and struck off, was still subject to the inquisitorial powers ^ 

 of logic and rhetoric ; the art of reasoning or assigning determinate ideas 

 to determinate words ; and the art of polishing or adorning the dry 

 skeleton of naked sense with the gay and ornamental dress of trope, 

 figure, and elegant collocation. 



Rhetoric, therefore, is nothing more than the natural language of the 

 passions or the imagination which so closely associates with them, reduced 

 to the rules of art. It is the study of those peculiar modes of expression, 

 warm, exclamatory, abrupt, interjective, full of energy, image, and personi- 

 fication, by which the passions characterize themselves when called into 

 action ; and which, as the natural symbols of the passions, have the wonder- 

 ful power, not only during recitation, but on paper alone, when read by 

 ourselves in the privacy of the closet, of enkindling in the mind of the 

 reader or hearer the very feelings of which they are the representatives. 



Hence the soothing tranquillity produced by pastoral poetry ; the melting 

 sympathy with which we yield to metrical tales of distress and misery ; 

 the rousing, dithyrambic efl?ect of national songs ; the sublime enthu- 

 siasm of devotional lyrics. Hence the well-planned fictions of the epic 

 Muse excite all the interest of real life ; the popular orator, lying hold of the 

 same weapons, subdues every heart to his own purposes ; but, above all, 

 hence the magic spell of the drama, that, by personating the characters 

 and scenery of the subject it selects, transports us to the time, place, and 

 circumstance of the representation, and makes us parties to its own story. 



The drama, above every thing else, is the language of the passions carried 

 into real life, and enlisted on the side of virtue. I say on the side of 

 VIRTUE, because such power has virtue over the human mind, by the wise 

 and gracious constitution of our nature, that neither epic poetry can excite 

 admiration, nor tragic poetry emotion, unless virtuous feehngs be awakened 

 within us. Every poet finds it impossible to interest an audience in a 

 character without representing that character as worthy and honourable, 

 though it may not be perfect ; and he is equally aware that the great 

 secret for raising indignation, is to paint the person who is to be the object 

 of it in the colours of vice and depravity. And hence, Aristotle speaks 

 with his usual correctness, when he tells us, that the design of tragedy, 

 (and it is to the tragic drama I am now limiting my attention) is to purify 

 our corrupt tendencies by means of pity and terror. Such was the direct 

 scope of the simple tragedy of the Greeks : the uniform object of iEschy- 

 lus, who founded it ; of Euripides, who improved ; and of Sophocles, who 

 perfected it ; and all within the short space of little more than twenty years. 



And such is equally the object of the more operose and complicated 

 tragedy of modern times, whether French or English ; whether turning, as 



