Moir's Casa Wappy and Mrs. Browning's De Profundis are memorable examples.

A fine melancholy pervades all the writings of some poets, and sometimes the chief portion of a national literature will have this characteristic. This has been remarked in the Scottish ballads, such as Lochaber, Bonnie Doon, and "I'm wearin' awa, Jean."

Pity for the sufferings of others is as effective in literature as when the poet bewails his own sufferings:

"O, it was pitiful,

Near a whole city full,
Home she had none !"

Sympathy is closely allied to pity. Nowhere is this more tenderly expressed than in the lines of the Stabat Mater :

Expressions of fear, dismay, or similar feelings abound in poetry and oratory. Jefferson says:

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

This is the burden of the Dies Iræ:

"O that day, that day of mourning!
Day when from the dust returning
Man for judgment shall prepare him.

Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!"

Dejection may be associated with melancholy, but is stronger, and may be found deepening into extreme gloom, as in Gray's Ode on Eton College.

Regret for past actions is associated with dejection, and goes beyond it:

"O had his powerful destiny ordained

Me some inferior angel. I had stood

Then happy: no unbounded hope had raised

Ambition !"

Repentance is associated with regret, but also with selfreproach. It is most commonly seen in religious hymns:

"Depth of mercy, can there be
Mercy still resolved for me!"

Remorse is repentance with such strong self-reproach as tot be almost without hope:

"O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven."

Despair often accompanies remorse.

spired by both of these:

Poe's Raven is in

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted nevermore."

Sometimes despair arises from suffering without any re

morse.

So in Prometheus :

"For this wandering, ever longer, evermore,

Hath o'erworn me;

And I know not on what shore

I can rest from my despair."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LITERATURE OF THE DESIRES, AFFECTIONS, AND PASSIONS.

$ 476. THE LITERATURE OF THE DESIRES, AFFECTIONS,

AND PASSIONS.

THE literature of the desires, affections, and passions may be divided into two classes, according as it is concerned with the state of happiness or that of sorrow.

The state of happiness belongs to the indulgence of the desires, affections, or passions. This indulgence may take place in two ways:

1st. By hope, which is the anticipation or expectation of such indulgence.

2d. By the actual possession of the objects of such feelings. The state of sorrow belongs to the non-indulgence of these feelings. Indulgence may be prevented in two ways:

Ist. By being baffled or disappointed in them, or wounded in any way in the possession of them.

2d. By being in a condition in which the satisfaction in such feelings is unattainable.

By means of sympathy, happiness or sorrow may arise under another form through the power which we have of identifying ourselves with the feelings of others, so that we rejoice or suffer along with them. It is through this feeling of sympathy that the literature of the desires, affections, or passions exerts its power.

§ 477. LITERATURE CONNECTED WITH THE STATE OF

HAPPINESS.

1. Literature connected with the state of happiness. This includes literature in all its brighter aspects: narrative, which deals with the progress of men towards the attainment of hope; and exposition, which deals with encouragement and gratification of feeling. This has already been sufficiently illustrated.

§ 478. LITERATURE CONNECTED WITH THE STATE OF SORROW. 2. Literature connected with the state of sorrow.

The pathetic is of every conceivable degree, from the lowest to the loftiest; sometimes rising so high as to equal the sublime, or even surpass it; at other times blending itself with the beautiful; while in every case it preserves its own characteristics.

The pathetic is the purest of all influences which can affect us. It is lofty, tender, holy; it is felt most deeply; and while it is most profound in its effects, it is also most enduring. The most earnest books are the most pathetic; for in the most earnest natures human sorrow is always felt the most strongly, and this feeling is reproduced in their words.

The pathetic is associated equally with the most simple expressions and the most elaborate. From extreme simplicity it gains, perhaps, its greatest power; for the works which in all ages have most moved the heart and excited warm human sympathy have been those which are distinguished for unpretending simplicity of diction, such as old ballads, songs, and unaffected narrative. Yet it would be a mistake to confine the expression of this quality to simple words, for there are departments of literature which are at once most musical, most

melancholy; and the pathetic is so rich and so many-sided that it may well claim the exercise of the utmost resources of language.

§ 479. THE PATHETIC IN THE SACRED SCRIPTURES.

The sphere of the pathetic is commensurate with literature itself, and nowhere does it appear more strikingly displayed than in the oldest writings with which we are familiar, namely, those of the Hebrews. Apart from any other deeper cause, this may be accounted for in the same way that the predominance of the sublime in the same literature is accounted for. It is due to the character of the race, and also to the nature of the subjects treated of. These Scriptures treat of the emotional nature of man, his relations with God; of sin, remorse, repentance, sorrow, grief, and suffering. The pathetic is prominent through all the book of Genesis, especially in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and constantly reappears in the other narrative books. It animates most of the Psalms, particularly the penitential ones; it is visible through all the writings of the prophets; while in the New Testament the Apocalypse presents us with sublimity and pathos intermingled. But it is in the Gospels that we are to look for the highest examples. Here all pathos finds its consummation; it becomes sublime; it goes beyond the sublime—it is divine.

§ 480. IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE.

Turning to classical antiquity, we find not much in the mythology, but much in the literature. The simple pathos of some of Homer's descriptions resembles that of the book of Genesis. Hector with his wife and child; the sorrow-stricken Priam; the recognition of Ulysses by his faithful dog, are among those touches of nature by which the heart is moved. In tragedy the pathetic holds a foremost place, since it deals with sorrow; and though the woes are sometimes too colossal for human interest, yet there are not wanting instances of a kind which awakens a fellow-feeling. Euripides has been called the poet of pathos, and through many of his plays there prevails the central figure of a sorrowing woman-the Alcestis, dying for her husband and parting with her children; Medea, the injured wife, struggling with a mother's love; the Electra, mourning

for mother and brother; the Hecuba, reft of all her children, and standing alone, a stricken mother-the Mater Dolorosa of Greek literature.

In Latin there is less of this, for the Roman nature was more stern and practical; and the Roman literature was imitative and artificial.

§ 481. IN MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE.

Medieval literature shows still more of this. A deeper and tenderer spirit had been introduced by Christianity. There are three great instances in which the pathetic exerted an extraordinary power.

1. The Latin hymns of the Church. These reflected the sentiments of religion, and while strains of rejoicing arose at times in view of the heavenly Jerusalem, the strains of sadness, enforced by the presence of sin, prevailed. Of all these, two stand pre-eminent-the Stabat Mater, which unfolds in immortal verse the woes of the Mater Dolorosa; and the Dies Iræ, which blends with the sublimest imagery the most mournful accents of sadness.

2. The metrical romance and ballad literature. These compositions blend love and war, and unite with them an indescribable pathos; valor is now united with tenderness; the hero is no longer a stoic, he is a man, and is not ashamed of tears. Woman, too, comes forward to take up a place in literature, side by side with man. Chivalry has given her a dignity unknown before. The Arthurian and Carlovingian epopoeias are full of the new gospel of chivalry, and intermingle war, love, religion.

3. Dante, the great overshadowing figure of the Middle Ages, was the poet of woe. In the Inferno and Purgatorio there is scarcely a ray of light to relieve the darkness of that gloom through which his spirit wandered; and even the Paradiso could not dissipate its shadow. The pathos of the Inferno is overpowering. It is not his enemies only whom Dante finds there; but his friends, loved in former days, and now recognized in torment. The father of Cavalcanti, his teacher, Brunetto Latini, are those whose appearance wrings the poet's soul with anguish; while the sight of others, and the recital of their story, make him fall down senseless with horror and compassion.