Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations. carries along with it the evident marks of address and study *. OUR author proceeds all along on the supposition that there are two distinct effects produced by the eloquence on the hearers; one the sentiment of beauty, or (as he explains it more particularly) of the harmony of oratorial numbers, of the exercise of these noble talents, genius, art, and judgment; the other, the passion which the speaker purposeth to raise in their minds. He maintains, that when the first predominates, the mixture of the two effects becomes exceedingly pleasant, and the reverse when the second is superior. At least, if this is not what he means to assert and vindicate, I despair of being able to assign a meaning to the following expressions : The genius required to paint,-the art employed in collecting, the judgment displayed in disposing“ diffuse the highest satisfaction on the audience, and "excite the most delightful movements.. By this 66 66 66 means the uneasiness of the melancholy passions is "not only overpowered and effaced by something stronger of an opposite kind, but the whole movement of those passions is converted into pleasure, "and swells the delight which the eloquence raises in * Commoveaturne quisquam ejus fortuna, quem tumidum ac sui jactantem, et ambitiosum institorem eloquentiæ in ancipiti forte videat? Non: imo oderit reum verba aucupantem, et anxium de fama ingenii, et cui esse disserto vacet. QUINT. 1. xi, cap. 1. 231 Sect. I. The different solutions hitherto given by philosophers, examined. " us." Again, Again, "The impulse or vehemence arising "from sorrow, receives a new direction from the "sentiments of beauty. The latter, being the predominant emotion, seize the whole mind, and convert "the former." Again, "The soul being at the same time roused with passion, and charmed by eloquence, feels on the whole.” And in the paragraph immediately succeeding, "It is thus the "fiction of tragedy softens the passion, by an infusion "of a new feeling, not merely by weakening or di"minishing the sorrow." Now to me it is manifest, that this notion of two distinguishable, and even opposite effects, as he terms them, produced in the hearer by the eloquence, is perfectly imaginary; that, on the contrary, whatever charm or fascination, if you please to call it so, there is in the pity excited by the orator, it ariseth not from any extrinsic sentiment of beauty blended with it, but intimately from its own nature, from those passions which pity necessarily associates, or, I should rather say, includes. BUT do we not often hear people speak of eloquence as moving them greatly, and pleasing them highly at the same time? Nothing more common. But these are never understood by them, as two original, separate, and independent effects, but as essentially connected. Push your enquiries but ever so little, and you will find all agree in affirming, that it is by being moved, and by that solely, that they are pleased in philosophical strictness, therefore, the pleasure Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations. is the immediate effect of the passion, and the passion the immediate effect of the eloquence. BUT is there no pleasure in contemplating the beauty of composition, the richness of fancy, the power of numbers, and the energy of expression? There is undoubtedly. But so far is this pleasure from commixing with the pathos, and giving a direction to it, that, on the contrary, they seem to be in a great measure incompatible. Such indeed is the pleasure which the artist or the critic enjoys, who can coolly and deliberately survey the whole; upon whose passions the art of the speaker hath little or no influence, and that purely for this reason, because he discovers that art. The bulk of hearers know no further than to approve the man who affects them, who speaks to their heart, as they very properly and emphatically term it, and to commend the performance by which this is accomplished, But how it is accomplished, they neither give themselves the trouble to consider, nor attempt to explain *. The inquiry contained in this chapter was written long before I had an opportunity of perusing a very ingenious English Commentary and Notes on Horace's Epistles to the Pisos and to Augustus, in which Mr Hume's sentiments on this subject are occasionally criticised. The opinions of that commentator, in regard to Mr Hume's theory, coincide in every thing material with mine. This author considers the question no farther than as it relates to the representations of tragedy, and hath, by confining his view to this single point, been led to lay greater stress on Fontenelle's hypo Sect. I. The different solutions hitherto given by philosophers, examined. PART IV....The fourth hypothesis. LASTLY, to mention only one other hypothesis ; there are who maintain that compassion is "an ex"ample of unmixed selfishness and malignity," and may be "resolved into that power of imagination, by "which we apply the misfortunes of others to ourselves;" that we are said "to pity no longer than "we fancy ourselves to suffer, and to be pleased only by reflecting that our sufferings are not real; thus 66 66 66 indulging a dream of distress, from which we can "awake whenever we please, to exult in our security, "and enjoy the comparison of the fiction with truth." thesis, than, for the solution of the general phenomenon, it is entitled to. It is very true that our theatrical entertainments commonly exhibit a degree of distress which we could not bear to witness in the objects represented. Consequently the consideration that it is but a picture, and not the original, a fictitious exhibition, and not the reality, which we contemplate, is essential for rendering the whole, I may say, supportable as well as pleasant. But even in this case, when it is necessary to our repose, to consider the scenical misery before us as mere illusion, we are generally better pleased to consider the things represented as gemine fact. It requires, indeed, but a further degree of affliction to make us even pleased to think, that the copy never had any archetype, in nature. But when this is the case, we may truly say, that the poet hath exceeded and wrought up pity to a kind of horror. Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations. THIS is no other than the antiquated doctrine of the philosopher of Malmesbury, rescued from oblivion, to which it had been fast descending, and re-published with improvements. Hobbes indeed thought it a sufficient stretch, in order to render the sympathetic sorrow purely selfish, to define it " imagination or "fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding "from the sense of another man's calamity +." But in the first quotation we have another kind of fiction; namely, that we are at present the very sufferers ourselves, the identical persons whose cases are exhibited as being so deplorable, and whose calamities we so sincerely lament. There were some things hinted in the beginning of the chapter, in relation to this paradoxical conceit, which I should not have thought it necessary to resume, had it not been adopted by a late author, whose periodical essays seemed to entitle him to the character of an ingenious, moral, and instructive writer t. For though he hath declined entering formally into the debate, he hath sufficiently shown his sentiments on this article, and hath endeavoured indirectly to support them. I DOUBT not that it will appear to many of my readers as equally silly to refute this hypothesis and to defend it. Nothing could betray reasonable men into such extravagancies, but the dotage with which one is affected towards every appendage of a favourite + Hum. Nat. chap. ix. sect. 10. Hawkesworth. |