Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/132

Rh this critic has applied to the drama, it would appeal so much to thoughts and opinions, and so little to sentiment, that it would be too much a drama of thought and opinion to take the rank it does in the most sacred  shrine of the tragic muse.

Pity, soft-eyed mother of the virtues, ever assuaging the severe aspect of their male parent, justice; pity, most unselfish of all the emotions, although in truth but one form of self-suffering; pity, that appreciation of evil  which we understand and sympathize with, and therefore suffer with or compassionate when we behold others under the weight of its affliction; pity, whose Heavenly influence it is the highest aim and object of the tragic muse to invoke, is the sentiment which the character of Ophelia more powerfully elicits than that of any other of Shakespeare's female characters. For if Imogen was at one time as wretched, her misery was changed into joy; and if Desdemona was equally innocent, her agony was more brief, and less intense. The sufferings of Cordelia were alleviated by active resistance against the evil power by which they were occasioned. In Lear, the king of sorrows, and in Othello, the lion poisoned by a villain's hand, are characters which excite pity as intense, though not as unmixed; for in neither is the agony felt to be quite undeserved, or quite unavoidable. For it is to be remarked, that to excite the pure sentiment of pity—First, it is needful the suffering reflected from the consciousness of another upon our own sensibility should be such as we can appreciate, and bring home, as it were, to ourselves;

"Haud ignarus mali miseris succurrere disco."

Secondly, that the sufferings should be great. We do not pity the petty miseries of life; and although a man's happiness may be stung to death by poisonous insects as certainly as it can be torn by the fangs of a savage  monster, we are not revolted at