Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/198

192 For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that the part, e.g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning or end, and so to the rest: all depend on one another, like the links of a curious chain. If terror and pity are only to be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and EuripedesEuripides [sic]' example: but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both these may be profitable to the end of a tragedy, reformation of manners; but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience: though Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form.

He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what Rh