fical. The Italian tongue, in ftrength and variety of harmony, is not fuperior, and perhaps not equal, to the English; but, abounding more in vowels and liquid founds, and being therefore more easily articulated, is fitter for the purposes of mufic and it deferves our notice, that poetical numbers were brought to perfection in Italy two hundred years fooner than in any other country of modern Europe.

CHA P. VII.

Of Sympathy.

S a great part of the pleasure we derive from poetry depends on our Sympathetic Feelings, the philofophy of Sympathy ought to form a part of the fcience of Criticism. On this fubject, therefore, I beg leave to fubjoin a few brief remarks, that may poffibly throw light on fome of the foregoing, as well as fubfequent reafonings.

When we confider the condition of another perfon, especially if it feem to be pleasureable or painful, we are apt to fancy ourselves in the fame condition, and to feel in fome degree the pain or pleasure that we think we fhould feel if we were really in that condition. Hence the good of others becomes in fome measure our good, and their evil our evil; the obvious effect of which is, to bind men more clofely together in fociety, and prompt them to promote the good, and relieve the diftreffes,

N 3

treffes, of one another. Sympathy with diftrefs is called Compaffion or Pity: Sympathy with hap piness has no particular name; but, when expreffed in words to the happy perfon, is termed Congratulation.

We sympathife, in fome degree, even with things inanimate. To lofe a ftaff we have long worn, to fee in ruins a house in which we have long lived, may affect us with a momentary concern, though in point of value the lofs be nothing. With the dead we fympathife, and even with those circumstances of their condition whereof we know that they are utterly infenfible; fuch as, their being shut up in a cold and folitary grave, excluded from the light of the fun, and from all the pleafures of life, and liable in a few years to be forgotten for ever. Towards the brute creation our fympathy is, and ought to be, strong, they being percipient creatures like ourselves. A merciful man is merciful to his beaft; and that perfon would be deemed melancholy or hard-hearted, who fhould fee the frifking lamb, or hear the chearful fong of the lark, or observe the transport of the dog when he finds the mafter he had loft, without any participation of their joy. There are few paffages of descriptive poetry into which we enter with a more hearty fellow-feeling, than where Virgil and Lucretius paint fo admirably, the one the forrow of a fteer for the loss of his fellow, the other the affliction of a cow deprived of her calf *,

Virgil, Georg. iii. verf, 519.; Lucretius, ii. verf. 355.

But

But our fympathy exerts itself most powerfully, towards our fellow-men: and, other circumstances being equal, is ftronger or weaker, according as they are more or less nearly connected with us, and their condition more or lefs fimilar to our own.

We often fympathife with one another, when the person principally concerned has little sense of either good or evil. We blush for another's illbreeding, even when we know that he himself is not aware of it. We pity a madman, though we believe him to be happy in his phrenfy. We tremble for a mason standing on a high scaffold, though we know that custom has made it familiar to him. It gives us pain to fee another on the brink of a precipice, though we be fecure ourselves, and have no doubt of his circumfpection. In these cases, it would seem, that our fympathy is raised, not so much by our reflecting on what others really feel, as by a lively conception of what they would feel if their nature were exactly fuch as ours; or of what we ourselves fhould feel, if we were in their condition, with the same sentiments we have at present *.

Many of our paffions may be communicated and ftrengthened by fympathy. If we go into a chearful company, we become chearful; if into a mournful one, we become fad. The prefence of a multitude engaged in devotion, tends to make us devout. Cowards have behaved valiantly,

See Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, fet. 1.

་

when all their companions were valiant; and the timidity of a few has ftruck a panic into a whole army. We are not, however, much inclined to fympathife with violent anger, jealousy, envy, malevolence, and other fanguinary or unnatural paffions we rather take part against them, and fympathise with those persons who are in danger from them; because we can more easily enter into their distress, and suppose ourselves in their condition. But indignation at vice, particularly at ingratitude, cruelty, treachery, and the like, when we are well acquainted with the cafe, awakens in us a moft intense fellow-feeling; and the fatisfaction we are conscious of, when fuch crimes are adequately punished, though fomewhat ftern and gloomy, is however fincere, and by no means difhonourable or detrimental to our moral nature; nor at all inconfiftent with that pity, which the fufferings of the criminal extort from us, when we are made to conceive them in a lively manner,

Of fympathy all men are not equally fufceptible. They who have a lively imagination, keen feelings, and what we call a tender heart, are moft fubject to it. Habits of attention, the study of the works of nature, and of the best performances in art, experience of adverfity, the love of virtue and of mankind, tend greatly to cherish it; and thofe paffions whereof felf is the object, as pride, felf-conceit, the love of money, fenfuality, envy, vanity, have a tendency no less powerful to deftroy it. Nothing renders a man more amiable, or more useful, than a difpofition to rejoice

with them that rejoice, and to weep with those that weep; to enter heartily, not officiously, into the concerns of his fellow-creatures; to comply with the innocent humour of his company, more attentive to them than to himself; and to avoid every occafion of giving pain or offence. And nothing but downright immorality is more disagreeable, than that person is, who affects bluntnefs of manner, and would be thought at all times to speak all that he thinks, whether people take it well or ill; or than those pedants are, of whatever profeffion (for we have them of all profeffions), who, without minding others, or entering into their views of things, are continually obtruding themfelves upon the conversation, and their own concerns, and the fentiments and language peculiar to their own trades and fraternities. This beha viour, though under the name of plain-dealing it may arrogate a fuperiority to artificial rules, is generally the effect of pride, ignorance, or ftupidity, or rather of all the three in conjunction. A modest man, who fympathetically attends to the condition and fentiments of others, will of his own accord make thofe allowances in their favour, which he wishes to be made in his own; and will think it as much his duty to promote their happinefs, as he thinks it theirs to promote his. And fuch a man is well principled in equity, as well as in good-breeding: and though, from an imperfect knowledge of forms, or from his having had but few opportunities to put them in practice, his manner may not be fo graceful, or fo eafy, as

could