Does it carry an antidote to offset its demand upon our sympathies? Is there a katharsis that somehow transforms our pity and fear into relief and pleasure? There is something of the sort in the mere exercise of violent emotion, which in a measure carries its own relief and cure. There is something also of egotistical satisfaction, of self-congratulation that comes with the exercise of sympathy, a certain exaltation that virtue has gone out of us. There is something again of æsthetic delight in the artistic mastery which we feel in any great work of art. The harmony of the argument, the splendor of the verse, the grandeur of conception and expression may counterbalance the painfulness of the story. Yet more, tragedy may bring the inspiration of greatness and endurance, of purity and unselfishness of spirit. Its idealization of character, its revelation of beauty and power even in distress and downfall, may bring a reassurance that turns pity to exhilaration. In drama as in life there may come in moments of trial and ruin the visions of the eternities to console and exalt us. But is it true that these elements of relief are always felt, or are always triumphant over our depression and dismay? May not the impressions of pain and destruction be unrelieved and overwhelming? What relief or exaltation is there in the first impression from "Oedipus," "Lear," or "Ghosts"? We are filled with confusion, dismay, and pity. We cannot separate ourselves from the misery. We feel the intolerable burden of the world's woe. Our sympathies struggle beneath it, vainly, despairingly. How far such emotions have any potency for actual accomplishment in deed may be doubtful to the psychologists; but surely our recognition of tragedy as one of the greatest imaginative achievements needs no other warrant than our faith that virtue lies in human sympathy, in the only atonement that we can offer, the vicarious response of our emotions to share in suffering and defeat. From the nature of its subjects, tragedy may claim a certain preëminence in literature. If it be not truer, as is sometimes asserted, than comedy or other fiction, it has the opportunity to be more intense, more profound, more permeating in its emotional effect. As of all forms of literature, we ask for truth to life in incident, character, and word; of tragedy we ask for truth in regard to those things that affect us most deeply,--pain, disaster, failure, death. Like other forms, it may stimulate and excite, give pleasure and profit, convey new ideas and recall old, arouse questions of life and philosophy, excite multitudinous emotions; more exclusively than any other, it brings home to us the images of our own sorrows, and chastens the spirit through the outpouring of our sympathies, even our horror and despair, for the misfortunes of our fellows. NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY