ABSTRACT
The loftier persons of tragedy require an elevation of language and manner, which they never use in real life. Heroes and sages speak like other men, they use their action as carelessly and their looks as indifferently, and are not distinguished from their fellow-mortals by their personal but by their mental character; but the popular conception of a great man delights in dignifying his external habits, not only because great men are rarely seen and therefore acquire dignity from concealment, but because authors conclude that they who excel they so highly in important points can have nothing unimportant about them. They can hardly persuade ourselves for instance, that SHAKSPEARE ever disputed in a club or that MILTON was fond of smoking: the ideas of greatness and insignificance associate with difficulty, and as extreme associations are seldom formed but by minds of peculiar fancy and vigourous thought, it is evident they will be rarely entertained by the majority of the world.
