But love does not arouse only admiration, it also arouses “compassion” or as Dryden called “concernment”. It involves so much pining and whining on the part of the lover that in the true romantic tradition he is always on the verge of dying.
This “lethargy of love” is the only weakness of the great Hero. It paralyses his will. It makes him a captive, helpless and pitiable. He fawns on, and flatters, his beloved, and faints and swoons. He passes from love to jealousy, from hope lodes pair, from crisis to crisis. All prostrate at the feet of his cruel lady-love he pleads, “Without your pity and your love die.”