will be purged and carried off from the system by the operation of Tragedy.”
As to the means by which Tragedy is to excite pity and terror, Aristotle says that it will not do to exhibit a purely good man falling into adversity—that would be rather horrible than tragic; nor, on the other hand, would the representation of a villain receiving the retribution due to his crimes be a tragical story, however moral it might be. We require the element of undeserved calamity; and yet there must be some justice, too, in the course of events, so that, while we feel sorrow for what occurs, we shall feel also that things could not have been otherwise. The tale of Œdipus is often mentioned by Aristotle as a perfect subject for Tragedy. We may add that Mr Tennyson’s ‘Harold’ exhibits in this respect the same qualities; we see in it a noble character borne along to an undeserved and calamitous doom; and yet there is a sense that this is, partly at all events, the result of his own doing. Aristotle is not in favour of a tragedy ending happily. He says that poets sometimes make happy endings out of concession to the weakness of the spectators, but that this is quite a mistake, and that such endings are more suitable to comedy. He praises Euripides as the “most tragic of the poets,” on account of the doleful terminations of his plays, “though in other respects he did not manage well.”
Much stress has been laid, especially by the French, on “the unities” of the drama, as supposed to be prescribed by Aristotle’s ‘Poetic.’ But in reality he attaches no importance to the external unities of time
