Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/201

Rh which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more equitably than Mr. Rymer has done.

After all, we need not yield that the English way is less conducing to move pity and terror, because they often shew virtue opprested and vice punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.

And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute, whether pity and terror are either the prime, or arat [sic] least the only ends of tragedy.

'Tis not enough that Aristotle had said so; for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say (what I hinted on pity and terror, in the last paragraph save one), that the punishment of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good example of life. Now, pity is not so easily raised for a criminal (and the ancient tragedy always represents its chief person such), as it is for an innocent man; and the Rh