And crown what I profefs with kind event, If I fpeak true; if hollowly, invert

What best is boaded me, to mischief! I

Beyond all limit of what else in the world, Do love, prize, honour you.

Mir.

To weep at what I'm glad of.

I am a fool

TEARS of gladness are not uncommon; but, Miranda, from her particular education, could have no knowledge of the paffions in their extremes; fhe is therefore surprised at this apparent confufion in their symptoms: her furprife is a fpring to ours

THIS leads us, you see, to an effential point in the pathetic, namely, when a fentiment springs with a peculiar happiness from the character and the occafion.

Thus

Thus the Poet

The Heats and Minutes of affairs are watch'd,

And the nice Points of Time are met, and fnatch'd.

As thefe lines were written in praise of Fletcher, I fhall give you an example of the thing described, from his Maid's Tragedy-Melantius, on his arrival at Court, hears that his friend Amintor was that morning married. He knew that he was contracted to Afpafia; but did not know that she had been deserted by him in this inftant Afpafia comes across him

Thou fair Afpafia! may the holy knot

That thou haft ty'd to day, last 'till the hand

Of age undo it! may'ft thou bring a race

Unto Amintor, that may fill the world

Succeffively with foldiers

fortunes

Afp. My hard

Deferve not fcorn; for I was never proud, When they were good

WHEN We know that Afpafia thought herself infulted by the brother of her happy rival, this fentiment becomes fo affecting, that our hearts melt, and our eyes fill in the inflant.

THE uniformity in bur feelings on fimilar motives, though it be the ground-work of the pathetic, yet, at the fame time, it naturally produces in us an indifference to all fuch indications of paffion as are obvious and general.

!

THE

THE business therefore of the Poet, is to give fome unexpected advantage to these general feelings; either, by a happiness in the incidents from which they fpring; or fome peculiarity in the fituation and character of the perfon affected: of this we have a complete example, when the Daughters of Lear prefs hard upon him to reduce the number of his Knights

(For now I fpy a danger) I intreat you

To bring but five and twenty; to no more Will I give place or notice

Lear. I gave you all.

THE ingratitude of a daughter, who owed every thing to a father's generosity, might

naturally produce fuch a reproach as this but it receives an additional tenderness from the violent character of Lear, and the aggravating circumstances of his children's conduct.

If the Pathetic, as fhould feem from these proofs, muft owe its effect to the occafion which produced it, the fame may be affirmed, in part, of the fublime: I fay in part, because though great fentiments, when produced in the Drama, muft, in common with the pathetic, derive a particular and specific beauty from a happiness in their application; yet there will be this difference between them, that if a pathetic fentiment be confidered independent of the occafion which produced it, it lofes its pathetic force, On the other hand, if a sublime sentiment be confidered in the fame light, it loses the advantage