domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, is
in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to one
of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and Lillo,
for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a
dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to throw
off: the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs our inmost
affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all the
forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the heart, and
rouses the whole man within us.

The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any thing
peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not
an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work in the
common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people flock to
see a tragedy; but if there were a public execution in the next street,
the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then the difference
between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty. Children are
satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose: nor do
the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of murders and
executions about the streets, find it necessary to have them turned into
penny ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting and
authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving trade of
abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom he makes his enemies
for no other end than that he may live by them. The popular preacher
makes less frequent mention of heaven than of hell. Oaths and nicknames
are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are as fond of
indulging our violent passions as of reading a description of those of
others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate
in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so? the best answer will
be, Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as strong a