misery; and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve ourselves in relieving those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning by an instinct that works us to its own purposes without our concurrence."

The great author then proceeds to illustrate this position further, and after some observations says:

"The nearer tragedy approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all ideas of fiction, the more perfect is its power. But be its power what it will, it never approaches to what it represents. Choose a day to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting and music; and when you have collected your audience, just when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. This notion of our having a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see, if it was once done. We delight in seeing things which so far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be, to see redressed. This noble capital, the pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration or an earthquake, though he should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins, and among them many who would have been content never to have seen London in its glory."

So much for the causes of the pleasure experienced from tragedy. But how are we to account for the delight received from comedy? Some have imagined it to arise from a bad pride which men feel at seeing their fellow-creatures humiliated, and the frailties and follies of their neighbours exposed. The fact is indubitable, be the cause what it may. The great moral philosopher quoted above, in another part of his works, shrewdly observes, "In the disasters of their friends, people are seldom wanting in a laudable patience. When they are such as do not threaten to end fatally, they become even matter of pleasantry." The falling of a person in the street, or his plunging into the gutter, excites the laughter of those who witness the accident: but let the fall be dangerous, or let a bone be broke, and then comic feelings give way to the sympathetic emotions which belong to tragedy. On a superficial consideration, the delight we feel in tragedy bears the aspect of a cruel tendency in our hearts, yet it is implanted in us for the purposes of mutual beneficence. The pleasure we feel in comedy, too, looks like a malignity in our nature; but why may not it, like the other, be resolved into an instinct working us to some useful purpose without our concurrence?

The end of comedy, like that of satire, is to correct the disorders of mankind by exhibiting their faults and follies in ridiculous and contemptible attitudes. The tendency we feel to laugh at each other's foibles, or at those misadventures which denote weakness in us, being implanted by the hands of Providence, was no doubt given to us for special purposes of good, and in all probability to make men without the least intervention of will or reason, moral guides and instructers to each other. It is allowed by the soundest philosophers that ridicule has a much better effect in curing the vices and imperfections of men, than the most illustrious examples of rigid virtue, whose duties are so sublimed that they rather intimidate the greater part of mankind from the trial, than allure them to walk in their steps. The following definition of comedy given by Aristotle and adopted by Horace, Quintilian, and Boileau, corresponds with these observations: "Comedy," says the Stagyrite, "is an imitation of the worst of men; when I say worst, I don't mean in all sorts of vices, but only in the ridiculous, which are properly deformities without pain, and which never contribute to the destruction of the subject in which they exist."

It has been remarked that the most severe satirists have been men of exemplary goodness of heart. The giant satirist Juvenal, was a conspicuous illustration of this truth. While his superior intelligence and sagacity unfolded to him in their full size the vices and follies of his fellow-creatures, his superior philanthropy heightened his indignation at them. The same may perhaps be said of the dramatic satirists, or writers of comedy in general. We could adduce many instances to corroborate this assertion. That very man who stands unrivalled at the head of comic poetry, stands not less high in the estimation of all who know him, for generosity and benevolence. If those who have traversed the life of the author of the School for Scandal with the greatest ill will to the man, were put to the question which they thought, his good-nature or his wit were the greater, they would probably decide in favour of the former.

The most unamiable form in which comedy has ever appeared, was that it assumed at its first rise in Greece. The character of the Athenians was peculiarly favourable to it. The abbe Brumoy who has discussed the subject with vast labour and talent says, "generally speaking, the Athenians were vain, hypocritical, captious, interested, slanderous, and great lovers of novelty." A French author of considerable note, making use of that people as an object of comparison, says, "Un peuple aussi malin et aussi railleur que celui d'Athenes." They were fond of liberty to distraction, idolaters of their country, selfish, and vain, and to an absurd excess scornful of every thing that was not their own. Their tragic poets laid the unction of flattery in unsparing measure upon this foible of theirs, representing kings abased as a contrast to their republican dignity; and with all their greatness, it is easy to detect through their writings, a lamentable propensity in their muse to play the parasite with the people. To their gratification of the public foible, the tragic poets no doubt owed some small part of that idolatry in which they were held by the Athenian multitude. Yet no sooner did the comic writers appear, ridiculing those very tragic poets, than they became still greater favourites with the people. Horace has transmitted to us the names of three of these comic poets, cotemporaries—Cratinus, Eupolis and Aristophanes. If there were any before them, their names are buried in oblivion. Taking the structure of the tragedies of Æschylus for their model, these commenced the first great era of improvement in the comic drama. Of the comedies of Cratinus, Quintilian speaks in great commendation; the little of his poetry, however, that remained is not thought to justify that praise. Eupolis is related to have composed seventeen plays at the age of seventeen years. He was put to death by Alcibiades for defamation, and died unlamented except by a dog, which was so faithfully attached to him that he refused to take food and starved to death upon his master's tomb. So that of the three, Aristophanes alone lays claim here to particular commemoration.

Perhaps there is not one character of antiquity upon which the opinions of mankind are divided, and so opposite to each other as that of Aristophanes. St. Chrysostom admired him so much that he always laid his works under his pillow when he went to bed. Scaliger maintained that no one could form a just judgment of the true Attic dialect who had not Aristophanes by heart. Of