9. In this sense, then, tragedy satisfies its definition as "the flight
or elevation of life." The two indispensable supports which render this
elevation possible, are metrical expression and great situations. "In
the regeneration" the language of the market-place and the morning call
may answer to the realised harmony of life; there may, indeed, be "the
fifth act of a tragedy in every death-bed;" there may be no distinction
of great or little, high or low. But it is an affectation to confound
what shall be with what is. We cannot dissociate ordinary incidents from
the petty wants out of which they ordinarily spring, nor common language
from the common-place thoughts which it usually expresses. The action in
tragedy must be relative to the situation; and if the situation be one
which we are unable to separate from matter-of-fact associations,
neither can the action be so separated except by an effort which of
itself depresses the soaring spirit. Nor, again, if the action be
high-wrought, above the measure of man's ordinary activity, can it find
expression in the unrhythmical language[9] which corresponds to that
ordinary activity. New wine must not be put in old bottles; nor must the
motions of disenthralled passion be confined in vessels worn by the uses
of daily life.