tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. Pity, for example, has a much
larger part in _King Lear_ than in _Macbeth_, and is directed in the one
case chiefly to the hero, in the other chiefly to minor characters.

Let us now pause for a moment on the ideas we have so far reached. They
would more than suffice to describe the whole tragic fact as it
presented itself to the mediaeval mind. To the mediaeval mind a tragedy
meant a narrative rather than a play, and its notion of the matter of
this narrative may readily be gathered from Dante or, still better, from
Chaucer. Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_ is a series of what he calls
'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales _de Casibus
Illustrium Virorum_,--stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such as
Lucifer, Adam, Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the tale
of Croesus thus:

Anhanged was Cresus, the proudè kyng;
His roial tronè myghte hym nat availle.
Tragédie is noon oother maner thyng,
Ne kan in syngyng criè ne biwaille
But for that Fortune alwey wole assaile
With unwar strook the regnès that been proude;
For whan men trusteth hire, thanne wol she faille,
And covere hire brighte facè with a clowde.

A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in
high degree,' happy and apparently secure,--such was the tragic fact to
the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy and
pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men
and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the
plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some