to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done.
The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before
us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves
may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the
players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we
rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery,
as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death
may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our
consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real,
they would please no more.

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken
for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the
imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not
supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but
we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing
beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading
the history of "Henry the Fifth", yet no man takes his book for the
field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with
concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy
is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial
tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened
by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity
or force to the soliloquy of Cato.

A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore
evident, that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows
that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to
pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken
by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before