Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part
of our nature, as well as of the sensitive--of the desire to know, the
will to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these
different parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The
domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural,
is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively
to one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and
Lillo, [Footnote: For instance, _The Gamester_ and _George Barnwell_
They are to be found respectively in vols. xiv. and xi. of the _British
Theatre_.] for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and
lie like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is
unable to throw off; the tragedy of Shakespeare, which is true poetry,
stirs our inmost affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining
it with all the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings
of the heart; and rouses the whole man within us.
The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry is not anything
peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing.
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