In those persons who move
the profoundest pity, tragedy seems to consist in temperament, not in
events. There are people who have an appetite for grief, pleasure is
not strong enough and they crave pain, mithridatic stomachs which
must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity
can soothe their ragged and dishevelled desolation. They mis-hear
and mis-behold, they suspect and dread. They handle every nettle and
ivy in the hedge, and tread on every snake in the meadow.
"Come bad chance,
And we add to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to advance."
Frankly then it is necessary to say that all sorrow dwells in a
low region. It is superficial; for the most part fantastic, or in
the appearance and not in things. Tragedy is in the eye of the
observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer. It looks like an
insupportable load under which earth moans aloud, but analyze it; it
is not I, it is not you, it is always another person who is
tormented. If a man says, lo I suffer, -- it is apparent that he
suffers not, for grief is dumb.
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