As things are best illustrated by their contraries, I proceed to collect from classical authors, sentiments that appear faulty. The first class shall consist of sentiments that accord not with the passion; or, in other words, sentiments that the passion represented does not naturally suggest. In the second class, shall be ranged sentiments that may belong to an ordinary passion, but unsuitable to it as tinctured by a singular character. Thoughts that properly are not sentiments, but rather descriptions, make a third. Sentiments that belong to the passion represented, but are faulty as being introduced too early or too late, make a fourth. Vicious sentiments exposed in their native dress, instead of being concealed or disguised, make a fifth. And in the last class, shall be collected sentiments suited to no character or passion, and therefore unnatural.
The first class contains faulty sentiments of various kinds, which I shall endeavour to distinguish from each other. And first sentiments that are faulty by being above the tone of the passion.
Othello.———— O my soul’s joy!
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken’d death:
And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus high, and duck again as low
As hell’s from heaven!
Othello, act 2. sc. 6.
This sentiment is too strong to be suggested by so slight a joy as that of meeting after a storm at sea.
Philaster. Place me, some god, upon a pyramid
Higher than hills of earth, and lend a voice
Loud as your thunder to me, that from thence
I may discourse to all the under-world
The worth that dwells in him.
Philaster of Beaumont and Fletcher, act 4.
Secondly, Sentiments below the tone of the passion. Ptolemy, by putting Pompey to death, having incurred the displeasure of Cæsar, was in the utmost dread of being dethroned. In this agitating situation, Corneille makes him utter a speech full of cool reflection, that is in no degree expressive of the passion.
Ah! si je t’avois crû, je n’aurois pas de maître,
Je serois dans le trône où le Ciel m’a fait naître;
Mais c’est une imprudence assez commune aux rois,
D’ecouter trop d’avis, et se tromper au choix.
Le Destin les aveugle au bord du précipice,
Ou si quelque lumiere en leur ame se glisse,
Cette fausse clarté dont il les eblouit,
Le plonge dans une gouffre, et puis s’evanouit.
La mort de Pompée, act 4. sc. 1.
In Les Freres ennemies of Racine, the second act is opened with a love-scene. Hemon talks to his mistress of the torments of absence, of the lustre of her eyes, that he ought to die no where but at her feet, and that one moment of absence was a thousand years. Antigone on her part acts the coquette, and pretends she must be gone to wait on her mother and brother, and cannot stay to listen to his courtship. This is odious French gallantry, below the dignity of the passion of love. It would scarce be excusable in painting modern French manners; and is insufferable where the ancients are brought upon the stage. The manners painted in the Alexandre of the same author are not more just. French gallantry prevails there throughout.
Third. Sentiments that agree not with the tone of the passion; as where a pleasant sentiment is grafted upon a painful passion, or the contrary. In the following instances the sentiments are too gay for a serious passion.
No happier talk these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.
Eloisa to Abelard, l. 47.