 Originally published beside “Of the Standard of Taste” in Four Dissertations, “Of Tragedy” is a peculiar essay. Its direct engagement with Bernard de Fontenelle and the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Dubos confirms Hume’s acquaintance with French aesthetics. Hume makes passing reference to catharsis in his mention of spectator cries and sobs that “give vent to their sorrow” (OT, 258), but there is no evidence of familiarity with Aristotle’s Poetics. On the whole, the essay says surprisingly little about the nature of tragedy, and what it says is combined with discussions of melodramas and historical writing. Its real topic is the experience of conflicting emotions directed simultaneously at a single object, a topic treated in the Treatise. Because the pleasure offered by tragedy and melodrama depends on and is proportionate with their capacity to arouse grief, fear, and other unpleasant passions, Hume uses literature and theater as an occasion to elaborate on his theory of mixed emotions. As Hume formulates it, the problem is to explain the nature of the relationship between our approbation, which is pleasurable, and the presence of “sorrow, terror, anxiety,” and other naturally disagreeable emotions (OT, 258). The solution, Hume claims, is that any emotion “which attends a passion, is easily converted into it, though in their natures they be originally different from, and even contrary to each other” (T, 419).