SOURCES OF PATHOS.

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countered by every device that can stimulate the flow of this soothing emotion. The fate of mortality common to all, and its untimely arrival and untoward circumstances in the greater number, keep us in constant readiness for the tender outburst. The passing away of generation after generation, the sinking into forgetfulness, the long and last farewell,-are the touching themes of religion, the vocation of the tragic poet, the soul-engrossing actuality.

It is a strong testimony to the power of this emotion, not merely to tranquillize, but to cause delight, that for the sake of it we can bear with tales and pictures of distress. Even death can yield a powerful fascination. On this theme, we are again obliged to recall the Elegy of Gray.

(5.) Though it appears a contradiction, the tender feeling is awakened by pleasure as well as by pain. The contradiction is easily reconciled, for the influence of the emotion on pain is due to its intrinsically pleasurable nature.

The pleasures disposing to tenderness are chiefly the gentle pleasures, as opposed to the fiery and exciting; they are such as are compatible with repose. The example most relevant to our present object is the Beautiful in the narrow sense, as opposed to the Sublime. The characteristic elements of Beauty, as will be seen, are certain sensuous pleasures of the sight and hearing, coupled with harmonies, and extended by associations. These incline to, and adopt, tenderness as a kindred quality.

Any very intense pleasure will dispose to tender feeling. Even the elation of power may show itself in affectionate condescension; and the sentiment of the sublime may be mingled with what pertains to beauty.

The influence of acts of goodness in breeding tenderness is in no small degree connected with the immediate benefit conferred on the recipient. It is seldom that a tender response is given to the display of affection followed by causing pain, as in surgery, or in punishing offenders for their good.

The vocabulary of Tenderness corresponds to these various sources of emotion. (1.) Mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, child, lover, husband, wife, home, hearth, friend, country, God, Saviour. (2, 3.) Good, kind, benevolent, protecting, generous, humane, love, the heart, fond, devoted, sacrifice, affection, sympathy, pity, compassion, fellow-feeling, disinterestedness. (4.) Pain, agony, torment, awe, sadness, tears, distress, misery, adversity, calamity, disaster, trouble, trial, affliction, bitterness, sinking, desolation, bereavement,

fatherless, widow, orphan, wretchedness, tribulation, sorrow, grief, inconsolable, tragic, pathetic, despairing, doomed, devoted, accursed, death, the grave, the tomb, the departed. (5.) Pleasure, joy, rejoicing, delight, charm, happiness, felicity, bliss, transport, glad, grateful, cordial, genial, heart-felt.

3. With allowance for difference of subject, the conditions of the employment of language to raise Pathetic emotion are the same as for strength. (See p. 63.)

A mere profusion of the phraseology and images of pathos, without originality, keeping, or alternation and relief, will fail to accomplish the end in view. When the language exceeds the occasion, we have the maudlin and the sentimental, as in Sterne's episode on the Ass, and not unfrequently in the speeches of both Sheridan and Burke.

The maudlin is reached by Burke in the following sentence on the British constitution, a subject that people in general are unable to regard as an object of affectionate fondness. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of policy the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties ; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.'

In Extract VI., pathos is shown in contrast to tragic strength on the one hand, and to unredeemed horrors on the other. The misery that inspires tender feeling must neither repel nor overwhelm our sympathies.

4. The interest of natural objects is, in many instances, due to their suggesting the tender emotion.

Although the vastness of the world inspires the sublime, yet there are many objects and situations that touch us in other ways (p. 69). The fragile stem indicates weakness; the flower on the rock is an image of protection. See, among numberless instance, Wordsworth's odes to the Daisy.

Thou unassuming common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which love makes for thee!

5. The following are additional examples of Pathos. 'Ye shall seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.'

EXAMPLES OF PATHOS.

Wolsey's Farewell need only be referred to.

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The Clerk's Tale of Griselda in Chaucer, with its incredible picture of meekness and submission, is replete with pathos. Griselda's speech to her husband, when about to be cast off, contains these touching lines:

O goodè God! how gentle and how kind
Ye seemed by your speech and your visage
The day that makèd was our marriage !

Compassion for the oppressed, and for the victims of iajustice, is a common form of tenderness.

There is a deep pathos in the sense of loneliness, illustrating the alliance of tender emotion with weakness.

How can I live without thee! How forego

Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly join'd,
To live in these wild woods forlorn.

The decline of strength with advancing years disposes to the melting mood.

The circumstances and arts of pathos may be well studied in Thackeray's picture of Esmond at his mother's grave.

'Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother's resting-place. Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name with which sorrow had re-baptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and grief. He fancied her, in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her) and in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister's bed-side (so fresh made that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth; then came & sound of chanting from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others

had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace-might she sleep in peace; and we, too, when our struggles and pains are over! But the earth is the Lord's, as the heaven is; we are alike His creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death! tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble. I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.'

From the nature of the subject, the Bible abounds with examples of Pathos, greatly aided by the Saxon style of our translation.

Every great poetic genius has been able to produce strokes of pathos; but in some it is a marked feature. John Paul Richter is probably unsurpassed. Shakespeare's tenderness is equal to his sublimity. Chaucer frequently touches the tender chords; Spenser still oftener. In recent times Cowper, Goethe, Burns, Scott, Wilson, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Shelley, have given many examples.

THE LUDICROUS-HUMOUR-WIT.

1. The ludicrous and the laughable are names for what excites laughter.

Among the causes of laughter we may name abundance of animal spirits, any sudden accession of pleasure, the special elation of power and superiority, or an unexpected diversion of the mind when under excitement.

2. The main element of the Ludicrous in composition is furnished by the degradation, direct or indirect, of some person or interest-something associated with power, dignity, or gravity. It is farther requisite that the circumstances of this degradation should not be such as to produce any other strong emotion, as pity, anger, or fear.

Comedy took its rise from the jeering and personal vituperation indulged in during the processions in honour of the

god Dionysus, or Bacchus. In the regular comedy, and in every kind of composition aiming at the laughable, the essential ingredient is the vilifying and degrading of men, or of institutions, commanding some degree of veneration or respect.

The pleasure thus afforded is very great, and has a strong affinity with that feeling of exalted energy constituting the sublime. To throw down anything from a height is a signal manifestation of power, and, as such, gratifies the agent and his sympathizers. Even where the prostration is not designed by a conscious agent, as when any one tumbles into the mud, or takes fright at an unexpected appearance, we enjoy a glut of power corresponding to the greatness of the effect. When our sympathy is with the object thrown down, the tendency to laughter is arrested, and some other feeling takes its place.

Examples of this degradation are the following:-Molière introduces the celestial messenger of the gods, sitting tired on a cloud, and complaining of the number of Jupiter's errands. Night expresses surprise that a god should be weary; whereupon, Mercury indignantly asks, "Are the gods made of iron ?" This degradation of divine personages is ludicrous and delightful to unbelievers. Accordingly, in the decline of Paganism, the gods came to be a subject of mirth in such compositions as the Dialogues of Lucian.

A Frenchman, disappointed with English cookery, exclaimed, 'Behold a land with sixty religions, and only one sauce.' The putting religion and sauce upon a level partly degrades religion, but still more degrades the speaker; and there is a complex effect of the ludicrous.

The lines of Hudibras

And like a lobster boiled the morn
From black to red began to turn-

contain an obvious degradation of a dignified subject, although of the inanimate world. Whatever inspires us with lofty feelings of admiration or awe can be a subject of ludicrous prostration, if we are disposed to exult over the fall. Most usually we enjoy the laugh at something that we observe other people respecting, but do not ourselves respect.

The incident of Queen Sophie Charlotte taking a pinch of snuff during the pompous and protracted coronation ceremonial of her husband Friedrich I. of Prussia, is intensely ludicrous. The rules of decorum were treated with contempt,