_Interdum tamen & vocem Comœdia tollit, Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore: Et Tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri; Telephus, & Peleus, cum pauper, & exul uterque, Projicit ampullas, & sesquipedalia verba, Si curat cor spectantis tetigisse querela._
Yet Comedy sometimes may raise her Voice, And _Chremes_ be allow'd to foam and rail: Tragedians too lay by their State, to grieve: _Peleus_ and _Telephus_, evil'd and poor, Forget their swelling and gigantick Words, If they wou'd have Spectators share their Grief. _Roscom._
The Reason of which is too plain, to want Explication. By _Sermo pedestris_, the Poet means a more familiar Style, but without Meanness; not quite degenerating into Prose, much less into what is vulgar, rude, or scurrilous: Tho' plain, it should be elegant; tho' humble, and complaining, yet graceful, and truly poetical. The Thoughts may, and often ought to be great, even when the Language is far otherwise. For there is a Sort of majestic and heroical Humility; and tho' Kings and Queens don't express their Grief in pompous and sonorous Words, yet there is some Difference betwixt theirs, and vulgar Sorrows. There is the same Distinction of Style, as in the Habit of Mourners. The Monarch may exchange his Purple for Sable, yet, in his Behaviour, in his Looks, there is such a Reserve of Majesty, as will easily distinguish him from a private Person in the same Attire.
As we observ'd elsewhere, there were two Sorts of Satire, the one of a lower Kind, and less confin'd; the other of a graver and severer Turn, and more sublime: So the former is suited to Comedy, the latter to Tragedy: For it is the Business of the one to ridicule the Follies of Mankind, and of the other to lash Vices, and Crimes of a deeper Dye. Hence _Juvenal_, a Writer of the sublimer Kind of Satire, seems to propose the Tragic Style for his Imitation.
_Grande Sophocleo carmen bacchamur hiatu._
The Satyr in a Rage, Struts in the Buskins of the Tragic Stage. _Dryden._
Nor is it less the Province of Tragedy to improve Virtue, than correct, and expose Vice; Virtue, I say, and that heroic too: For Tragedy is a Sort of heroic Drama; no Kind of Poetry is more sacred; none, to which the noblest and best Sentiments are so suitable; none, in which more exalted Precepts of Virtue are, or, at least, may be deliver'd.