cheek bedews,
And TASTE impassion'd woos the tragic Muse.

[Footnote: _The tragic Muse_, l. 246. Why we are delighted
with the scenical representations of Tragedy, which draw
tears from our eyes, has been variously explained by
different writers. The same distressful circumstance
attending an ugly or wicked person affects us with grief or
disgust; but when distress occurs to a beauteous or virtuous
person, the pleasurable idea of beauty or of virtue becomes
mixed with the painful one of sorrow and the passion of Pity
is produced, which is a combination of love or esteem with
sorrow; and becomes highly interesting to us by fixing our
attention more intensely on the beauteous or virtuous person.

Other distressful scenes have been supposed to give pleasure
to the spectator from exciting a comparative idea of his own
happiness, as when a shipwreck is viewed by a person safe on
shore, as mentioned by Lucretius, L. 3. But these dreadful
situations belong rather to the terrible, or the horrid, than
to the tragic; and may be objects of curiosity from their
novelty, but not of Taste, and must suggest much more pain
than pleasure.]

"The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor,
Where ruddy children frolic round the door,
The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak,
The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke, 250
The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glare
Through the long tissue of his hoary hair;--
As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall,
And crops the ivy, which prevents its fall;--
With rural charms the tranquil mind delight,
And form a picture to the admiring sight.
While TASTE with pleasure bends his eye surprised
In modern days at Nature unchastised.

[Footnote: _Nature unchastised_, l. 258. In cities or their
vicinity, and even in the cultivated parts of the country we
rarely see undisguised nature; the fields are ploughed, the
meadows mown, the shrubs planted in rows for hedges, the
trees deprived of their lower branches, and the animals, as
horses, dogs, and sheep, are mutilated in respect to their
tails or ears; such is the useful or ill-employed activity of
mankind! all which alterations add to the formality of the