Tragedy is rendered comic or burlesque by altering the station and manners of the persons; and the reverse may occur, of raising what is comic and burlesque into tragedy. On so little depends the sublime or the ridiculous! Beattie says “In most human characters there are blemishes, moral, intellectual, or corporeal; by exaggerating which, to a certain degree, you may form a comic character; as by raising the virtues, abilities, or external advantages of individuals, you form epic or tragic characters;” a subject humourously touched upon by Lloyd, in the prologue to “The Jealous Wife.”
“Quarrels, upbraidings, jealousies, and spleen,
Grow too familiar in the comic scene;
Tinge but the language with heroic chime,
’Tis passion, pathos, character sublime.
What big round words had swell’d the pompous scene,
A king the husband, and the wife a queen!”
——:o:——
This apology for Parody, extracted from “The Curiosities of Literature,” was written by the late Mr. Isaac D’Israeli more than fifty years ago. Mr. Isaac D’Israeli was a Jewish gentleman of great literary attainments, and of a most amiable character. He was the father of the late Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Mr. Isaac D’Israeli died in 1848.