Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/51

 scrib'd and represented, add mutual Force to each other; and that, while the Heroes are all engag'd in one common Scene, and each Action is strongly connected with the whole, the Concern is continually awake, and the Passions make an easy Transition from one Object to another. The strong Connexion of the Events, as it facilitates the Passage of the Thought or Imagination from one to another, facilitates also the Transfusion of the Passions, and preserves the Affection still in the same Channel and Direction. Our Sympathy and Concern for Eve prepares the Way for a like Sympathy with Adam: The Affection is preserv'd almost entire in the Transition; and the Mind seizes immediately the new Object as strongly related to that which formerly engag'd its Attention. But were the Poet to make a total Digression from his Subject, and introduce a new Actor, no way connected with the Personages, the Imagination, feeling a Breach in the Transition, would enter coldly into the new Scene; would kindle by slow Degrees; and in returning to the main Subject of the Poem, would pass, as it were, upon foreign Ground, and have its Concern to excite anew, in order to take Party with the principal Actors. The same Inconvenience follows in a lesser Degree, where the Poet traces his Events to too great a Distance, and binds together Actions, which, tho' not altogether disjoin'd, have not so strong a Connexion as is requisite to forward the Transition of the Passions. Hence arises the Artifice of oblique