inclination.

[2] Lord John Russell.

Perhaps I shall be able to lay more clearly before the reader, my
reasoning on this interesting as well as important subject, by
considering Tragedy and Comedy respectively, under three distinct
heads:--1st. with respect to the particular sphere or province of each;
2ndly, their plot and characters; and 3rdly, the end or design in view.

First, then, as to the province of Tragedy. Tragedy professes to be a
representation of all the high passions that influence the mind, such as
jealousy, hatred, or revenge; it can have nothing to do with vanity or
any other of the petty passions, for a course of action dependent on
them would appear as insignificant in Tragedy as the passions
themselves. Now, what possible advantage, in the way of improvement, can
be derived from witnessing a display of all the odious passions of our
nature? Some benefit might indeed be derived, if a moral were attached
to Tragedy, but it has no moral (at least very rarely) and for this
simple reason: Tragedy professes to be a speaking picture of life,--and
it is a melancholy but true reflection, that as in real life we see the
deserving depressed, and the bad man flourishing in the world, so also
it ought to be in Tragedy. Let us take _Macbeth_ or _Richard the Third_
as examples of this: we see here two men, by a succession of crime,
arriving at the pinnacle of their ambition, and rewarded for giving way
to their passions. There is little or no moral in the death of either,
for every honest soldier in their armies was subjected to the same fate,
and many of course met with it; so far from being disgraceful, falling
in battle is regarded as an honourable end, and it is the death a brave
man might wish to die. Secondly, let us consider the plot in Tragedy,