This is what we mean by a spirit of curiosity and a taste for exception. A particular trait is seized, and a character is made of it. But the exceptions and curiosities in literature have two great faults, viz. monotony and exaggeration.

Exceptions and bizarreries soon become monotonous. Odd people are only amusing for an hour or two, because we become tired hearing their sentiments and ideas revolve in the same circle. Strange and singular characters, which it is the custom to introduce on the stage, and in romances, produce the same effect: they are tiresome because they are uniform, because their oddness is a kind of reservoir from which their thoughts and their actions are always drawn. There is, indeed, something worse than being like every body; it is that of being always the same. Ordinary people are better liked than monotonous people. Besides, oddness is easy to imitate. As it relates to a particular trait, as it consists in a detail, and not in things taken as a whole, it is easy to imitate and to reproduce it. The facility of imitation is in literature as in painting, the punishment of what is called

mannerism.

The other fault of exceptions and singularities is, that they fall easily into exaggeration. When a dramatic author represents a simple and ordinary passion, he has a rule and a measure; he sees how the passions of men generally act, and he describes them just as he sees them. But when he represents a character or passion of exception, where is his rule and measure? Being forced to imagine what a man of this kind must do and say, he avoids the usual and common sentiments, that is to say, those which are real and natural. He believes that he cannot be too violent and passionate, and overleaps the object at which he aimed through fear of not being able to reach it. He then arrives at mania, which is, if we may so speak, the excess or sublime of the exceptional passions; and mania takes away from passion precisely that which causes it to be interesting. The passionate man affects us, because he touches and resembles us, because we were like him yesterday and might become so to-morrow. The maniac is an unfortunate one whom we send back to the madhouse, after the first glance of surprise and curiosity.

Let us not forget that the passions when they become exaggerated bear a strong resemblance to each other, and

that they no longer have a distinct name and character. Who can tell us when we enter a Theatre in the fifth act of a tragedy, and see the heroine a prey to a sort of convulsive frenzy; when we hear her cries and her sobs; when she wrings her hands and often falls down and rolls upon the stage, who can tell us if it is love, anger, or grief which drives her to this excess? The passions vary and differ from each other only when they are moderate to each of them belongs a peculiar language and gesture; then they become interesting on account of their diversity. When they are excessive they become uniform, and the exaggeration which they believe will exhibit the passion in bold relief, effaces and destroys it. The violence and wildness of the passions excite the senses rather than the mind; and this leads us to the second condition of dramatic emotion.

The second requisite of dramatic emotion is, that it should address itself to the understanding and not to the senses. Art ought to speak only to the mind; it is to the mind alone that it ought to give pleasure. If it seeks to excite the senses, it becomes degraded. This rule is applicable to all the arts. Even dancing is an art, when by steps and movements it pleases the soul, and creates in the mind the divine idea of gracefulness. It ceases to be an art and becomes a trade when it aims at exciting the passions. The arts are the language of the soul. If they are addressed to the senses, it is only for the purpose of recalling them to their proper vocation, which is that of being instrumental in enhancing the pleasures of the soul. They afford the greatest joy to man because they draw out all the faculties of his soul, because they occupy and fascinate at the same time his soul and his senses; and in the pleasure which they procure, they render the emotion of the senses subordinate to that of the mind, thereby placing supreme order in pleasure. It is this which causes them to be divine.

Of all the emotions which arise from the arts and which proceed from the imitation of human nature, dramatic emotion is the most perfect. No art can more nearly resemble reality than the dramatic art; and yet it is destroyed if it resembles it too closely and becomes confounded with it. Theatrical exhibitions should be the greatest of the illusions of art, but it must remain only an illusion.

The Greeks in order to be moved, were satisfied with

the fictions of their Theatre; and it is that which constitutes their dramatic glory. They confined themselves within the limits of illusion. At Rome, on the contrary, the people required gross exhibitions. The melancholy and harmonious moans of a Philoctetes or an Edipus did not touch the hearts of the Romans. They wanted to hear the cries of dying gladiators. Rome despised the petty terrors of the Greek tragedy and preferred the sports of the Circus, where men were fighting, wounding and killing each other, the arena red with blood and the earth shaken with the convulsions of the dying.

The literary education which we receive in modern society, does not always protect the soul from the grosser emotions of the body. În proportion as theatrical emotions become more common, the dramatic art becomes more gross ; and this is no longer confined to the upper classes of society, but it finds in spite of it its level among its auditory. There are two kinds of men who are capable of preferring the brutal pleasures of the Circus to the noble illusions of the Theatre: those whose minds are not cultivated, and those which are too highly cultivated, the ignorant and the refined. They commence with the sensual emotions, and satiety soon succeeding, leads to brutality. It is said, that when the spectator first witnesses the Bull-fight in Spain, he trembles with horror, but after a short time becomes so fascinated that he can scarcely turn away his eyes. There is indeed in the sight of danger and suffering an irresistible attraction for men; but it is this emotion which we must endeavor to purify by the assistance of art, in restraining it within the limit of illusion.

St. Augustine in his Confessions* has admirably described the cruel pleasure which man experiences in witnessing physical suffering. One of his friends named Alipius had for a long time abandoned the exhibitions of the Circus. One day while at Rome, some of his friends wished him to see a fight between two gladiators. He at first refused, but they prevailed upon him, and he went. Having arrived at the Theatre, he sat down on a bench in the midst of his friends, and closed his eyes. He remained in this position for some time, when all at once the spectators commenced a great shouting. It was a gladiator who had just fallen,

*Confessions, b. vi. ch. viii.

and overcome by curiosity he opened his eyes. "His soul," says St. Augustine, "received a severer wound than the gladiator who was just struck. The sight of blood which flowed, filled his soul with cruel pleasure. He wished to turn away his eyes, but felt them fixed upon this palpitating body. His soul in spite of him became intoxicated with sanguinary joy."

The Greeks themselves, the chosen people of the arts, finally adopted gladiatorial combats. Antiochus Epiphanes, one of those Asiatic kings who had all the caprice and strange humors which are created by want of occupation and the possession of absolute power, wished to introduce gladiatorial sports. But this kind of exhibition causing at first more terror than pleasure to the Greeks at Antioch,* who were not accustomed to the sports of the Roman people, Antiochus, in order to overcome this repugnance, at first made the gladiators stop as soon as blood was shed, but afterwards permitted them to continue to the death; and by degrees the Greeks acquired such a taste for these spectacles, that the king had no further occasion to send to Rome for gladiators. But from this time the dramatic art among the Greeks began to decline, and the Roman Circus took the place of the Greek Theatre. They had different kinds of gladiators, as we have different sorts of actors. They executed manœuvres, movements and steps, as they do in our ballets; they fought in time and cadence; but their chief pleasure was derived from witnessing the exhibition of physical suffering. When the spectators saw that the gladiators were disposed to avoid a severe conflict, they became enraged, and cursed them; but when they fought bravely, they applauded them, and by their cries kept up their courage until they fell, pierced with mortal wounds. The despair of the gladiators became proverbial at Rome; but this despair, giving violence to the

* Livy, book xli. chap. xx.

Quos si animadverterint esse concordes tum eos oderunt et persequuntur, et tanquam collusores ut fustibus verberenter exclamant. Si autem horrendas adversus invicem inimicitias eos exercere cognoverint, quo majore adversus invicem discordia furere senseritet, eo magis amant eo delectantur, 'et incitatis favent, et faventes incitant. ST. AUGUSTINE, De Catechisandis rudibus. Jam de se desperans, jam habens quasi gladiatorium animum.-ST. AUGUSTINE, Enarrationes en Psalmos.

gestures, cries, and blows of the gladiators, increased the emotion of the spectator.

When the Theatre causes the emotions of the body to prevail over those of the mind, it resembles the Circus; but it very soon undergoes a speedy decline. The emotions which proceed from the body are limited and monotonous: we soon become familiar with the tragical contortions of exaggerated passions; we quickly perceive that those cries of agony which at first strike the ear with surprise and terror, always sound the same. It is upon this rock that all the arts must be wrecked which go out of the circle of moral illusion to enter within the circle of material imitation. Material nature is much more limited than moral nature, either for enjoyment or suffering. The soul, in its griefs, is patient, and exhibits its pains in various ways, because it is immortal; while the body, after suffering for a short time, knows only how to die; it is the only variety which it can put in its griefs, and hence also the barrenness and monotony of material sufferings which we witness on the stage.

These reflections lead us to show how the ancient Theatre expressed the emotions which are caused by physical suffering, and the fear of death; and how the modern Theatre expresses them. It is with this that we propose to commence our lectures upon the employment of the passions in the drama.