Addison.

'--Dolor ipse disertum
Fecerat--'

Ovid.

As the Stoick Philosophers discard all Passions in general, they will
not allow a Wise Man so much as to pity the Afflictions of another. If
thou seest thy Friend in Trouble, says Epictetus, thou mayst put on a
Look of Sorrow, and condole with him, but take care that thy Sorrow be
not real. [1] The more rigid of this Sect would not comply so far as to
shew even such an outward Appearance of Grief, but when one told them of
any Calamity that had befallen even the nearest of their Acquaintance,
would immediately reply, What is that to me? If you aggravated the
Circumstances of the Affliction, and shewed how one Misfortune was
followed by another, the Answer was still, All this may be true, but
what is it to me?

For my own part, I am of Opinion, Compassion does not only refine and
civilize Humane Nature, but has something in it more pleasing and
agreeable than what can be met with in such an indolent Happiness, such
an Indifference to Mankind as that in which the Stoicks placed their
Wisdom. As Love is the most delightful Passion, Pity is nothing else but
Love softned by a degree of Sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing
Anguish, as well as generous Sympathy, that knits Mankind together, and
blends them in the same common Lot.

Those who have laid down Rules for Rhetorick or Poetry, advise the
Writer to work himself up, if possible, to the Pitch of Sorrow which he
endeavours to produce in others. There are none therefore who stir up
Pity so much as those who indite their own Sufferings. Grief has a
natural Eloquence belonging to it, and breaks out in more moving
Sentiments than be supplied by the finest Imagination. Nature on this
Occasion dictates a thousand passionate things which cannot be supplied
by Art.

It is for this Reason that the short Speeches, or Sentences which we
often meet with in Histories, make a deeper Impression on the Mind of
the Reader, than the most laboured Strokes in a well-written Tragedy.
Truth and Matter of Fact sets the Person actually before us in the one,
whom Fiction places at a greater Distance from us in the other. I do not
remember to have seen any Ancient or Modern Story more affecting than a
Letter of Ann of Bologne, Wife to King Henry the Eighth, and Mother to
Queen Elizabeth, which is still extant in the Cotton Library, as written
by her own Hand.

Shakespear himself could not have made her talk