To be discarded thence! The first edition at this point adds: “This is like that fine stroke of pathos in ‘Paradise Lost,’ where Milton makes Adam say to Eve,
‘Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart!’”
Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of our nature. Cf. “On People of Sense” in “Plain Speaker”: “Poetry acts by sympathy with nature, that is, with the natural impulses, customs, and imaginations of men, and is, on that account, always popular, delightful, and at the same time instructive. It is nature moralizing and idealizing for us; inasmuch as, by shewing us things as they are, it implicitly teaches us what they ought to be; and the grosser feelings, by passing through the strainers of this imaginary, wide-extended experience, acquire an involuntary tendency to higher objects. Shakspeare was, in this sense, not only one of the greatest poets, but one of the greatest moralists that we have. Those who read him are the happier, better, and wiser for it.”
Moore, Edward (1712-1757), author of “The Gamester” (1753).
[P. 259.] As Mr. Burke observes, in “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” Part I, Section 15: “Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy.”
Masterless passion. Cf. “Merchant of Venice,” iv, 1, 51: “For affection, Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood,” etc.
[P. 260.] satisfaction to the thought. “Othello,” iii, 3, 97.
Now night descending. See p. [128].
Throw him. Collins’s “Ode to Fear.”
Ingratitude. Cf. “King Lear,” i, 4, 281: “More hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child.”