[Footnote 4:  No L—­y of that time has written plays that are remembered.  The John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.  He was a handsome man:  first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian.  Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before.  There was another John Lacy advertising in the Post Boy, Aug. 3, 1714, The Steeleids, or the Trial of Wits, a Poem in three cantos, with a motto: 

  Then will I say, swelled with poetic rage,
  That I, John Lacy, have reformed the age.]

* * * * *

No. 397.  Thursday, June 5, 1712.  Addison.

  ’—­Dolor ipse disertum
  Fecerat—­’

  Ovid.

As the Stoick Philosophers discard all Passions in general, they will not allow a Wise Man so much as to pity the Afflictions of another.  If thou seest thy Friend in Trouble, says Epictetus, thou mayst put on a Look of Sorrow, and condole with him, but take care that thy Sorrow be not real. [1] The more rigid of this Sect would not comply so far as to shew even such an outward Appearance of Grief, but when one told them of any Calamity that had befallen even the nearest of their Acquaintance, would immediately reply, What is that to me?  If you aggravated the Circumstances of the Affliction, and shewed how one Misfortune was followed by another, the Answer was still, All this may be true, but what is it to me?

For my own part, I am of Opinion, Compassion does not only refine and civilize Humane Nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable than what can be met with in such an indolent Happiness, such an Indifference to Mankind as that in which the Stoicks placed their Wisdom.  As Love is the most delightful Passion, Pity is nothing else but Love softned by a degree of Sorrow:  In short, it is a kind of pleasing Anguish, as well as generous Sympathy, that knits Mankind together, and blends them in the same common Lot.

Those who have laid down Rules for Rhetorick or Poetry, advise the Writer to work himself up, if possible, to the Pitch of Sorrow which he endeavours to produce in others.  There are none therefore who stir up Pity so much as those who indite their own Sufferings.  Grief has a natural Eloquence belonging to it, and breaks out in more moving Sentiments than be supplied by the finest Imagination.  Nature on this Occasion dictates a thousand passionate things which cannot be supplied by Art.

It is for this Reason that the short Speeches, or Sentences which we often meet with in Histories, make a deeper Impression on the Mind of the Reader, than the most laboured Strokes in a well-written Tragedy.  Truth and Matter of Fact sets the Person actually before us in the one, whom Fiction places at a greater Distance from us in the other.  I do not remember to have seen any Ancient or Modern Story more affecting than a Letter of Ann of Bologne, Wife to King Henry the Eighth, and Mother to Queen Elizabeth, which is still extant in the Cotton Library, as written by her own Hand.