theatrical representations from the want of some violent agitation, to rouse us out of the torpor of every-day life." Du Bos would seem to have borrowed this idea from Montagne, but as I intend to treat of his theory more at large in another place, I shall take no further notice of it here. These are all the theories on the source of Tragic pleasure, treated of by Schlegel, in his "Lectures on Dramatic Criticism." As their insufficiency to account for this pleasure must appear sufficiently obvious from the preceding observations, I shall pass on, without further comment, to the other hypotheses adopted on the subject. RE UNIVERSITY CHAP. IV. Whether Fable operates on our Passions, by representing its events as passing in our sight, and by deluding us into a conviction of reality? And, whether this delusion, supposing it real, accounts for the Pleasures arising from Tragic Representations. LORD Kaimes treats at great length on the nature of our emotions and passions, and devotes a long section of seventeen pages to the emotions caused by fiction. This subject seems to have puzzled him considerably; and, in excuse for the profusion of argument which he has employed upon the occasion, and which, he acknowledges himself, “must have fatigued the reader with much dry reasoning," he tells him, that "his labour will not be fruitless, because, from that theory are derived many useful rules in Criticism." Unhappily, however, he has not said a word in this long section, but what is contained in one sentence of a previous section of the same work, where he says, that "ideas, both of memory and of speech, produce emotions of the same kind with what are produced by an immediate view of the object, only fainter, in proportion as an idea is fainter than an original perception." This sentence contains every thing to be found in all he has written, on the emotions caused by fiction; for, throughout this section, he only seeks to shew, "that ideal presence supplies the want of real pre sence." It is a knowledge of this truth," he says, "that unfolds the mystery hanging about the former proposition, and shews why ideas of memory, &c. produce emotions of the same kind with what are produced by an immediate view of the object." For my part, I cannot distinguish between "ideas of memory," and "ideal presence," and I am certain no other person can, except he who makes distinctions where there are none in nature. An idea of memory is an image which the mind forms of an absent object ;-ideal presence is the same: how, then, can the latter explain the mystery of the former, as both must be equally mysterious? To say that one explains the mystery of the other, is to say neither more nor less, than that it explains its own mystery. Such language is certainly more mysterious than the things which it pretends to explain. But the mystery does not end here: what follows is infinitely more mysterious, if, indeed, we can allow one thing to be more mysterious than another. The sole object of this section is to shew, that "ideal presence," that is, the image which we form to ourselves of something not pre sent, produces the same emotion that the real object would if it were present; and this, he tells us, explains why fictions produce the same emotions with real objects. Here we have again a reason without any reason, and one mystery explaining another. That ideal presence produces, if not the same effect with real presence, at least a copy of that effect, I readily admit ;-that fictitious objects do the same I admit also: how either effect takes place I cannot tell-all I know is the fact, and the fact is as clear in the one case as in the other. As the former effect stands, therefore, as much in need of explanation as the latter, how can we be told, that the one explains the other, when both are equally mysterious? we know both propositions to be true from experience; and, consequently, it requires no arguments to convince us that both these causes are followed by both these effects; but he who would undertake to explain to us how the effects proceed from the causes, would, instead of explaining one by the other, find it equally necessary to explain both, simply because both these causes, so far as regards the impressions they make upon us, are exactly the same. There is no difference between the emotions caused by images which we form to ourselves of real objects when absent, and those caused by imaginary ones, because the objects in neither case are present to the mind. The mind, consequently, is totally engrossed in the contem. plation of the image before it, and cannot attend to any abstract reflections on the original; and even if it did, it is obvious that the image, in both cases, receives its existence from the mind; for a real object can make no impression when it is not present; and, therefore, the image which the mind forms of it must be of its own creation. It is the same faculty of the mind that gives existence to all things whose prototypes are not present, and, consequently, all these images must be feigned or fashioned by the mind itself; so that, as far as regards the mind, ideal presence, or ideal images, are literally the same with fictitious or imaginary images, all being equally feigned or imagined by the mind. This truth is acknowledged in the very section of which I am now treating, for the author observes, that "if ideal presence be the means by which our passions are moved, it makes no difference whether the subject be a fable, or a true history;" and yet we are told in the sentence before this, that "ideal presence hath scarce ever been touched by any writer, and, however difficult in the explication, it could not be avoided in accounting for the effects produced by fiction." Had Lord Kaimes reflected a moment, he would have perceived, that it is im |