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ings directly antagonistic to this sentiment, but that the play of the impulse may be checked by a variety of considerations, such as that the person whose joy or suffering we are watching is too proud and self-reliant to need our fellow-feeling. When all such counteracting forces are wanting, any deeply impressive trait of character, by attracting a special energy of attention, predisposes us to follow sympathetically the person's career.

The highest degree of this sympathetic interest is awakened by those qualities which afford an appreciable delight to the observer. Whenever a person's character supplies a highly pleasurable impression, we experience faint pulsations of affection for the object; and it is through the play of this sentiment that the most devoted sympathy is called into activity. Whether the person contemplated inspires us with a glow of admiration, whether he awakens a more tender sentiment of affection, or whether he charms us with many touches of the ludicrous and the humorous, the pure delight which the contemplation brings with it serves to attach us to the character by strong personal bonds. Hence it is the noble and the beautiful, the amiable and the graceful, and the laughter-provoking persons of the drama and of the novel, whose lives interest us most profoundly. Who would follow with so intent a mind the tortuous windings of Romola's sad life, but for the charm of her gentle and beautiful nature? and who does not feel in reading King Lear that the fool owes something of the pity we give him to his grateful pleasantries and his quaint comicalities?

It may be worth while to note the mutual influences of the distinct interests which grow out of the aesthetic appreciation of character and out of sympathy. Not only does a pleasing character naturally draw to itself a sustained sympathetic attention, but the outgoings of sympathy become the source of a new sentiment for character. I have already spoken of the æsthetic attraction which belongs to the bright and joyous temperament, and which is based on the observer's sympathetic participation in the happiness revealed. To this fact may be added another, namely, that even sympathy with another's sorrow frequently becomes the basis of a tender regard. The pulsations of pity which the sight of another's grief awakens in a sensitive mind, are in themselves the germ of an abiding interest. We are prone to set value on the object which has in this way become identified with our own sorrow. And it is this accompaniment of tender emotion which blunts the edge of sympathetic pain, rendering the spectacle of another's grief so strangely

sweet in its bitterness. Thus, the impulse of sympathy, and the desire for the beautiful and the amiable, serve to react on one another, intensifying and sustaining one another. Every one who has reflected on his feelings is aware how inextricably the two currents of emotion alternate and mingle in the whole impression of a worthy drama or novel.

An important result of this action of sympathy may be found in the admitted need of a certain kind of Conclusion to a drama or a novel. Through the play of sympathy and of antipathy, we anticipate and desire the final happiness of pleasing and admirable persons, and the misery or humiliation of wicked and despicable natures. This fact of our emotional nature cannot be ignored either by the dramatic poet or by the novelist. His difficulty lies, of course, in providing this satisfaction consistently with the demands of truth and probability. The requirements of verisimilitude, when they can be defined, are one main controlling influence in art, as may be illustrated in the catastrophe of the modern tragedy, which, though in itself painful, is accepted as a truthful representation of life. At the same time the influence of poetic or emotional justice may be recognized even here, since, as Aristotle long ago taught, the ultimate suffering of the innocent, though undoubtedly true to life and more than once to be found in Shakspeare, is but little suited for tragic spectacle. In comedy and the lighter species of fiction, where truth to nature, as I have remarked, is less severely insisted on, we find ample room for the indulgence of these emotional anticipations.

Here we may see meanness chastised, and honourable fidelity crowned with admiring recognition. It is worth noting, too, that the activities of our sympathetic and antipathetic feelings are apt to exert an appreciable though unobtrusive influence on our estimate of what is probable in the course of human events. For example, although a quiet observation of actual life certainly teaches us that the unworthy frequently prosper, people are very apt to judge of the probability of a fictitious story as if it were a universal law that wrong-doing ends in misery and shame. That is to say, they erect an emotional standard of truth into the place of a logical.

Now that we have examined the relations of the aesthetic interests of character to those of story or plot, and to those which correspond

Mr. Spencer very ingeniously connects this "luxury of pity" which he thinks is afforded by all helpless objects, with the parental instinct. Principles of Psychology, Vol. II., p. 622, et seq.

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to our sympathy and antipathy, it ought not to be difficult to assign approximately the style of character suitable to the several species of drama and of fiction. In addition to the gratifications already discussed, each variety of these arts aims at supplying the delight of Harmony; and it has long been recognized that this requirement helps to determine the form of the characters and actions represented. Keeping these several æsthetic laws in view, let us inquire into the precise manner in which the several types of human character enter into tragedy, comedy, and romance.

It appears to have been recognized, since the famous definition of Aristotle, that the Drama aims at pourtraying an interesting and impressive Action. Hence the order of characters best fitted for dramatic representation may be described as active and vigorous natures, whose restless impulses prompt them incessantly to new plans and undertakings. The more quiet and passive order of character plays a subordinate part as the object of dramatic action, often furnishing a directing stimulus to the active propensities of the more eager natures.

Coming now to the more special subject of Tragedy, we find that the nature of the total impression aimed at serves very considerably to limit the characters introduced. Since the dominant effect of tragedy is an earnest and elevated mental tone, it is obvious that the characters represented must, for the most part, be great and aweinspiring. How far lighter and even amusing aspects of human nature may be admitted in tragedy as subordinate elements of relief, is a question which different persons will answer differently according to their peculiar temperament. Further, the need of an action highly stimulative of sympathetic fear and pathetic tenderness serves, as Aristotle well showed, to determine approximately the most tragic type of character as one which is neither perfectly innocent, so as to inspire the horror of a martyrdom, nor utterly wicked, so as to chill all warmer interest, awakening simply a feeling of abhorrence. Again, the plot of tragedy, leading up to a grand and stirring catastrophe, has to be developed, to a large extent, out of the forces latent in the principal characters. Hence, the most fitting characters for tragic effect are those in which there is an unstable equilibrium of moral forces, great and worthy quali ties being menaced so to speak, by undeveloped impulses of evil.

Tragedy, then, requires before all other things a wide scope for destructive action, and vast forces of good and evil concentrated in a single individual. It is probable that our modern society offers but

little material for the deep-moving narratives of a Euripides or of a Shakspeare. The present conditions of social life do not often supply an arena for that vast and imposing collision of individual forces on which the finest tragic effect seems to depend. At the same time, this change in the structure of social life is attended with a change in the ideas of naturalness; and it is not, perhaps, too much to say that the majority of refined persons to-day are disposed to see in the harrowing catastrophes of Shakspeare's plays, quite as much of the abnormal and inhuman as of the life-like.

One result of these transformations in our moral ideas has been the development of a new species of drama, which, without aiming at a gigantic ruin of interests, seeks to retain something of the solemn splendour of the ancient tragedy. This variety of drama assumes a prominent place in German literature. As examples of it I may cite Lessing's Nathan der Weise and Goethe's Tasso. The special interest of this literature for our present consideration lies in the fact that it places increased emphasis on dialogue, and on the revelations of the less turbulent regions of human feeling. Any one who has seen the part of Nathan intelligently rendered will scarcely doubt that the fine divulgence by histrionic art of the many activities of thought and feeling which make up the hidden foundations of a character, is fitted to supply a considerable dramatic interest. Nevertheless, it may be doubted whether a play will ever produce an adequate dramatic effect from this source alone. It may be supposed that the spelldissolving accompaniments of the stage are too obtrusive, in the view of our critical generation, to allow of a profound impression from a representation which does not seek to stimulate the intense interest of a stirring action or of a complicated plot; and this critical dissolution of æsthetic impression is especially easy when the dramatic utterance has a highly pathetic colouring. I confess that some of Schiller's most beautiful utterances of internal sentiment, when heard in the theatre, are apt to appear to the cooler English temperament, a little too warmly tinted, and fail to produce an appropriately serious impression. Hence this character-drama seems to be best fitted for the quieter appreciation of private perusal. How finely dramatic speech may convey the swiftly-changing tints of the inner life of emotion and thought, is fully illustrated in the works of Mr. Browning.

The several species of Comedy, like those of tragedy, are somewhat restricted in the employment of character by their distinctive aims. The object of comedy is the production of a cheerful and hilarious

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mood, by means of a light and amusing spectacle. Accordingly, it has little room for the more earnest and imposing types of characFurther, since comedy aims at a style of action which is amusing and laughter-provoking, its best characters are, first of all, those who possess some ludicrous quality susceptible of an effective exposure, and secondly, those who combine a fund of humour with a certain cleverness and skill, by virtue of which they are able to act on the ludicrous subject, now alluring him into a chain of absurdities, now entangling him in imaginary disasters in order eventually to undeceive him, and now foiling and gently punishing him for unseemly defect or excess.

The gratification both of the sympathetic and of the antipathetic impulse is much more restricted in comedy than in tragedy. A momentary fear, may, no doubt, be accepted for the sake of a speedy relief; and Shakspeare has shown, in such pieces as The Merchant of Venice and As you like it, how to compass a highly gladsome effect through an action which opens with a seemingly gloomy and threatening situation. The moderate punishment of all petty unworthiness of character affords, as we have seen, one mode of the pleasure of laughter. Even so complete a discomfiture as is involved in the humiliation of Shylock, may, under certain circumstances, sustain the merry and hilarious character of the whole effect.*

Since the peculiar pleasure of laughter may result either from the perception of a ludicrous quality of character, or from the sight of a moderate and painless discomfiture of an undeserving person, the sources of hilarity in comedy will be found either in the characters or in the intrigue or plot. When the laughter is afforded by a series of complicated knots and their solution, we have the Comedy of Intrigue, of which our own literature, both of the Elizabethan period and of the Restoration, affords abundant examples. With respect to the verisimilitude of the action in such plays, it has already been remarked that the mind is especially disposed to suspend calculation of probabilities, and to give itself up to the wild suggestions of imagination, when enticed into merriment of mood.† A signal instance

* This has been questioned by some critics, who see in the overthrow of a scouted Israelite, rather a pathetic, or even a tragic, than a comic event. Yet Gervinus has done much to demonstrate the poet's perfect justness of sentiment in this instance.

It is possible that this rejection of fact is sometimes a conscious process, and that one experiences a pleasurable feeling of liberty-which is highly conducive to laughter-in thus playfully defying at the moment the stern necessities of natural law.

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