f fortitude was at the same time expressed in his
countenance, admiration would be added to our pity. On the contrary, if
the artist should chuse to represent his thigh as shot away by a cannon
ball, and should exhibit the bleeding flesh and shattered bone of the
stump, the picture would introduce into our minds ideas from a butcher's
shop, or a surgeon's operation-room, and we should turn from it with
disgust. So if characters were brought upon the stage with their limbs
disjointed by torturing instruments, and the floor covered with clotted
blood and scattered brains, our theatric reverie would be destroyed by
disgust, and we should leave the play-house with detestation.

The Painters have been more guilty in this respect than the Poets; the
cruelty of Apollo in flaying Marcias alive is a favourite subject with
the antient artists: and the tortures of expiring martyrs have disgraced
the modern ones. It requires little genius to exhibit the muscles in
convulsive action either by the pencil or the chissel, because the
interstices are deep, and the lines strongly defined: but those tender
gradations of muscular action, which constitute the graceful attitudes of
the body, are difficult to conceive or to execute, except by a master of
nice discernment and cultivated taste. _B._ By what definition would you
distinguish the Horrid from the Tragic?

_P._ I suppose the latter consists of Distress attended with Pity, which
is said to be allied to Love, the most agreeable of all our passions;
and the former in Distress, accompanied with Disgust, which is allied to
Hate, and is one of our most disagreeable sensations. Hence, when horrid
scenes of cruelty are represented in pictures, we wish to disbelieve
their existence, and voluntarily exert ourselves to escape from the
deception: whereas the bitter cup of true Tragedy is mingled with some
sweet consolatory drops, which endear our tears, and we continue to
contemplate the interesting delusion with a delight which it is not easy
to explain.

_B._ Has not this been explained by Lucretius, where he describes a
shipwreck; and says, the Spectators receive pleasure from feeling
themselves safe on land? and by Akenside, in his beautiful poem on the
Pleasures of Imagination, who ascribes it to our finding objects for the
due exertion of our passions?

_P_. We must not confound our sensations at the contemplation of real
misery with those which we experience at the scenical representa