 Unfortunately, this interpretation merely heightens the problem. What is it that rewards vulgar taste? Why does violent spectacle attract anyone to routine, predictable potboilers? Natural sympathy should arouse uneasiness at the gory spectacle, yet the vulgar have no compensating reward. Brilliant language is surely an attraction of Shakespeare’s Othello, but no such achievement is to be found in most of the popular fiction that reliably delights its audience. Hume even implies that the vulgar do not attend to “eloquence” and similar formal achievement. However, the mere fact of “imitation” seems insufficient to explain the predominant pleasure in the face of this material. Is it the spectacle’s “exactness of imitation” (SOT, 276)? But that would seem to be a compensating pleasure in all but the most inept production, and would lead us to expect that vulgar audiences would respond with equal pleasure to almost any inferior work that meets their expectations. But this is simply not the case. “Of Tragedy” does not meet the standards of argument and insight set by Hume’s other contributions to aesthetics.