of grief is gained without confession. Feeling is at once consoled by communion, and sheltered in the privacy of a crowd. For all who have any depth in them, however habitually light-hearted, such an occasional overflow is tranqullising, while those whose burden presses heavily are eased and comforted. They are rapt from the narrow contemplation of their own destiny into a world where all private trouble is annihilated, and yet is typified so as to give an excuse for tears.
Considered so far, the want to which tragedy ministers is not the craving for excitement but the need for expression.
2. A direct result of tragic representation is the enlargement of sympathy. The poet sets before the spectators a life different from and yet akin to theirs, which, however strange to them, powerfully stirs their hearts. Consider the effect of this, not on an individual reader, but on a dense assemblage of spectators. Will not each of them experience a fulness and refinement of sympathy with every other, for which their ordinary work and striving gives little room? The hero of the piece may be their own countryman. Then their individual interests are lost in patriotism. Or he may be not their countryman. Then they are lifted into a wider region of Pan-Hellenic or of purely human feeling.
3. But it must not be forgotten that besides the pathetic and ethical, tragedy has also an intellectual motive. This is well expressed by Milton in his Common-place Book. It was, indeed, the aspect of this form of poetry which most clearly presented itself to him. His words are:—"Quid enim in totâ philosophiâ aut gravius aut sanctius aut sublimius tragediâ rectè constitutâ, quid utilius ad humanæ vitæ casus et conversiones uno intuitu spectandos?" "Is there in all philosophy a thing more dignified, more holy, or more lofty, than well-ordered tragedy;—more effective for the concentrated contemplation of the catastrophes and revolutions of human life?"
Tragedy is here viewed as the representation of
