with sorrow is often a more pungent sen|sation than our sympathy with joy, it al|ways falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
It is agreeable to sympathise with joy; and wherever envy does not oppose it, our heart abandons itself with satisfaction to the highest transports of that delightful sentiment. But it is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter into it with reluctance. When we attend to the representation of a tragedy, we struggle against that sympathetic sorrow which the entertainment inspires as long as we can, and we give way to it at last only when we can no longer avoid it: we even then endea|vour to cover our concern from the com|pany. If we shed any tears, we carefully conceal them, and are afraid lest the specta|tors, not entering into this excessive ten|derness, should regard it as effeminacy and weakness. The wretch whose misfortunes call upon our compassion feels with what reluctance we are likely to enter into his sorrow, and therefore proposes his grief to us with fear and hesitation: he even smothers the half of it, and is ashamed,
