a city when the evil are permitted to have
authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man,
as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he
indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater
and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another
small--he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the
truth.

Exactly.

But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our
accusation:--the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and
there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing?

Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say.

Hear and judge: The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a
passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in which he represents
some pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or
weeping, and smiting his breast--the best of us, you know, delight in
giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the
poet who stirs our feelings most.

Yes, of course I know.

But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you may observe that
we pride ourselves on the opposite quality--we would fain be quiet and
patient; this is the manly part, and the other which delighted us in the
recitation is now deemed to be the part of a woman.

Very true, he said.

Now can we be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that
which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person?

No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable.

Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view.

What point of view?

If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural
hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and
that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is
satisfied and delighted by the poets;--the better nature in each of
us, not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the
sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another's;
and the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in
praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he
is, and making a fuss about his troubles; he thinks that the pleasure
is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem
too? Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil
of other men something of evil is communicated to thems