l
there. In the figure of the maddened Lear we see

A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch,
Past speaking of in a king;

and if we would realise the truth in this matter we cannot do better
than compare with the effect of _King Lear_ the effect of Tourgenief's
parallel and remarkable tale of peasant life, _A King Lear of the
Steppes_.

2

A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of
exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But
it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from
another side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man,
descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darkness
like pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job was
the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were
well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearing
him to death, that would not make his story tragic. Nor yet would it
become so, in the Shakespearean sense, if the fire, and the great wind
from the wilderness, and the torments of his flesh were conceived as
sent by a supernatural power, whether just or malignant. The calamities
of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly
from actions, and those the actions of men.

We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we
see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these
circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these
others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds
leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. The effect
of such a series on imagination is to make us regard the sufferings
which accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only or
chiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but equally
as something which is caused by them. This at least may be said of the
principal persons, and, among them, of the hero, who always contributes
in some measure to the disaster in which he perishes.

This second aspect of tragedy evidently differs greatly from the first.
Men, from this point of view, appear to us primarily as agents,
'themselves the authors of their proper woe'; and our fear and pity,
though they will not cease or diminish, will be modified accordingly. We
are now to consider this second aspect, remembering that it too is only
one aspect, and additional to t