sary to the excitement of sympathy; for without bringing home the situation of another to ourselves, we can form no conception of his sensations, and we cannot be influenced by that which we cannot conceive. Hence the sentimental pangs which frequently torture minds of susceptibility and refinement, are the subject of ridicule with those whose coarser organization or habitudes, does not allow of the conception of such sources of pain.

Hence likewise the cruelty so often exhibited to lovers, by women who are wanting in capacity to conceive, or in the experience which should teach them the pangs of unrequited love. By Shakspeare this is very strikingly elucidated in the cruelty of Phebe to Silvius, previously to her passion for Rosalind, and her subsequent compassion when she herself had felt the "wounds invisible," "That love's keen arrows make."*

Sil. Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me; do not, Phebe:
Say, that you love me not; but say not so

In bitterness: The common executioner,
Whose heart the accustom'd sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,
But first begs pardon; Will you sterner be
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops ?
Phe. I would not be thy executioner;

I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.
Thou tell'st me, there is murder in mine eye:
'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,

That eyes, that are the frailst and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,-
Should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers!
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;
And if my eyes can wound, now let them kill thee;
Now counterfeit to swoon; why now fall down;
Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,

Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.

Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee:
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
Some scar of it; lean but upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps: but now mine eyes,
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not;

Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes

That can do hurt.

The power of the imagination abovementioned, is therefore, as I have already admitted, indispensable to sympathy; being the only medium through which we can form any conception of the sensations of others, and consequently the only one through which they can excite emotion in ourselves: but it does not appear sufficiently to explain, why a conception of the existence of certain feelings in another, should awaken emotion in us. Were the explanation afforded by the illustrious author whom I have quoted, correct, the strength of our sympathetic sensations, would be proportionate to the strength of our fancy, and the degree of our internal susceptibility to pain or pleasure; because the latter would give us the highest idea of the influence of pleasurable or painful causes, and the former would enable us more completely to change places with the object calling forth our sympathy. But this is in great measure contrary to truth; for men who are equally susceptible of corporal torture, and who have equally vivid conceptions of the sufferings of such as are exposed to them, experience the sentiment of commiseration in a very different degree: nor do we find people of the most powerful fancy, those who suffer most by sympathy. Such persons are often almost devoid of this amiable principle, in its more serious forms. Pocts are quite as susceptible of home felt evil as other men; and are certainly endowed with superior powers of fancy; yet they are not found to be peculiarly open to the calls of sympathy. The spectators of distress, after expressing their strong sense of its evils, very often finish with a self-felicitation that their fate is different; and appear to be only affected by the satisfaction thus awakened. Yet they must have gone through that pro

If ever, (as that ever may be near)

You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,

Then shall you know the wounds invisible

That love's keen arrows make.

But when Rosalind had excited in Phebe similar pangs, to those which the latter had previously ridiculed in Silvius-mark how changed her style:

Phe. Dead shepherd! now I find thy saw of might;

Whoever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?

Sil. Sweet Phebe,

Phe.

Ha! what say'st thou, Silvius!

Şil. Sweet Phebe, pity me.

Phe. Why, I am sorry for thee, gentle Silvias.

cess of the imagination, which would be productive of sympathy according to the theory I have quoted. It is probably by the senti ment of self-felicitation just called into view, that the multitude are so strongly attracted to behold public executions, when the truly sympathetic avoid them with horror, as scenes which sympathy must feel but cannot relieve.

As an elucidation of his hypothesis, it is observed by our author, that an imaginary uneasiness is often excited in the corresponding limbs of a spectator, by the local evils which vagrants expose to excite compassion. But this I consider as a morbid influence of the fancy, or a species of physical sympathy, which is not always productive of the moral sentiment. The presence of this I conceive to be invariably indicated by compassion, and a disposition to afford relief: but persons most liable to the fantasies thus excited by objects in distress, are not always the most ready to succour them. Disgust, aversion or horror, are often the only effect of these whimsical conceits: while those who have stronger minds, and better hearts, without any of this morbid stimulus, but instigated by a genuine impulse of moral sympathy, far from abandoning the wretched, hasten to communicate comfort, consolation, or relief.

Agreeably to the theory I have cited, the pains or pleasures of sympathy, would have some resemblance to those of the object by which they are produced; whereas they are in general widely different. The one is often a physical sensation, the other is invariably a moral sentiment. So far as we merely commute in imagination our situation for that of an object in distress, our sensations can only be a very feeble and inadequate imitation of his, and must widely differ from that oppressive sensation which hangs upon the bosom of sympathy, and which is very little varied by the nature of the misfortune which excites it, excepting as to its force. In this respect it may, and often does exceed the pangs of the sufferer.

In elucidation of this critique, I trust to be excused, if I again cite a fictitious picture from the Prince of Dramatic Poets. With me his copies have all the authority of the original. If not nature, they are prototypes of nature, which can never be equalled by delineations of real events, until we shall have a Shakspeare to record them. On these grounds I venture to make him my

standard of authority, conscious that if in calling up fiction in support of truth, I offend against philosophy, I shall find an apology in the taste, if not in the reason of my readers.

I beg leave to call into view that scene in the tragedy of King Lear, where the virtuous and venerable Gloster degraded from the fortune, rank and power in which he had been nurtured, is pinioned by ruffians, and Cornwall having already exterminated one of his eyes, is about to pluck out the other. A situation more calculated to excite sympathy, can hardly be imagined. The good old man, a victim to filial ingratitude and treachery, is to spend the evening of his life, "all dark and comfortless" forever deprived of the cheering rays of the sun.

A humble retainer, overcome by sympathy, draws his sword singly to oppose the completion of the cruel design; and after inflicting on his master a wound which soon after proves mortal, dies by a thrust in his back implanted by the infuriate Regan. There can be no doubt, but that the noble impulse, the power of which is in this passage so well represented by Shakspeare, must have been excited by that interchange of situation, with the venerable victim, which the appeal of the latter was so well calculated to excite.

"He, that will think to live till he be old,

"Give me some help:-O cruel! O ye gods!"

It is a query naturally arising in the mind, What would be my suffering under these horrid circumstances. But the conception thus arising was only a spark which kindles, but does not constitute that noble sentiment which he soon after gratifies at the expense of life. When, with sword in hand, he rushes upon the oppressor of virtue and wretched old age, he no longer imagines himself in the place of the miserable victim; it is not by a feeble imaginary imitation of the sensations of blindness, or the torture of losing an eye, that he is propelled; it is by a nobler flame which Fancy had merely served to enkindle. He was probably

"A most poor man, made tame to Fortune's blows;

Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows",
Was "pregnant to good pity."

Upon the considerations thus stated, I think that we may conclude that the degree in which we sympathize with the pleasures

or pains of others, is not merely dependent on an imaginary interchange of situation, but on the degree in which we are capacitated to feel the conception thus originated, not physically, but morally, not corporally, but in our hearts or souls. It is this capacity or property in the soul of man, which I would designate by. the term sympathy, which in its origin is to be considered equally occult with the principle of vitality, or the attraction between the sun and revolving planets, and only to be treated as a primary, instinctive, and inscrutable qualification, in the soul of man, implanted for the most happy and obvious purposes, by a direct law of the Creator. ANALYTICUS.

THE SCRIBBLER, NO. I.—FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

I have often been struck by the different value which men annex to their own literary productions, and to those of others. It is not simply that the fame and success of our own performance is dear to us, that we wish it to be read, studied and admired for the sake of being extolled or revered by others, as the authors of so much eloquence or wisdom. We feel unspeakable complacency and satisfaction in the survey of the work. Review it frequently and with new pleasure, and when it has been laid aside or disappeared so long as to be nearly forgotten, we fasten upon it anew with the utmost eagerness, and give it a dozen successive readings without satiety or weariness.

This fondness for our own productions does not always originate in vanity. It does not argue any defect of judgment or taste, because he that feels it may display uncommon discernment in estimating the merit of other writers. While he reads with the utmost approbation, his own work, he is, frequently, so free from vanity as either not to desire or expect the applause of others. He may clearly perceive and unaffectedly acknowledge the superior merit of others, yet he reads no work with so much satisfaction, or so frequently as his own.

When he commences his career, and before he is enlightened by experience, he may possibly imagine that every reader will find as many charms in his performance as he has found; that