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Published in the Year 1768.

HAT Praises are without Reason lavished on the Dead, and that the Honours due only to Excellence are paid to Antiquity, is a Complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to Truth, hope for Eminence from the Herefies of Paradox, or those, who, being forced by Disappointment upon confolatory Expedients, are willing to hope from Posterity what the present Age refuses, and flatter themselves that the Regard which is yet denied by Envy, will be at last bestowed by Time.

Antiquity, like every other Quality that attracts the Notice of Mankind, has undoubtedly Votaries that reverence it, not from Reafon, but from Prejujudice. Some feem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without confidering that Time has fometimes co-operated with Chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than prefent Excellence; and the Mind contemplates Genius through the Shades of Age, as the Eye surveys the Sun through artificial Opacity. The great Contention of Criticism is to find the Faults of the Moderns, and the Beauties of the Ancients. While an Authour is yet living, we estimate his Powers by his worst Performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by his best.

To Works, however, of which the Excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to Works not raised upon Principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to Observation and Experience, no other Test can be applied than Length of Duration, and Continuance of Esteem. What Mankind have long poffefsed, they have often examined and compared; and if they persist to value the Possession, it is because frequent Comparisons have confirmed Opinion in its Favour. As among the Works of Nature no Man can properly call a River deep, or a Mountain high, without the Knowledge of many Mountains and many Rivers; so, in the Productions of Genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other Works of the fame Kind. Demonstration immediately displays its Power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the Flux of Years, but Works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their Proportion to the general and collective Ability of Man, as it is discovered in a long Succession of Endeavours. Of the first Building that was raised, it might be with Certainty determined that it was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to Time. The Pythagorean Scale of Numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the Poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common Limits of human Intelligence, but by remarking, that Nation after Nation, and Century after Century, has been able to do little more than transpose his Incidents, new name his Characters, and paraphrafe his Senti

ments.

The Reverence due to Writings that have long subsisted, arises therefore not from any credulous Confidence in the superior Wisdom of past Ages, or gloomy Perfuafion of the Degeneracy of Mankind, but is the Confequence of acknowledged and indubitable Positions, that what has been longest known has has been most confidered, and what is most confidered is best understood.

The Poet, of whose Works I have undertaken the Revision, may now begin to affume the Dignity of an Antient, and claim the Privilege of established Fame and prescriptive Veneration. He has long outlived his Century, the Term commonly fixed as the Test of literary Merit. Whatever Advantages he might once derive from perfonal Allusions, local Customs, or temporary Opinions, have for many Years been loft; and every Topick of Merriment, or Motive of Sorrow, which the Modes of artificial Life afforded him, now only obscure the Scenes which they once illuminated. The Effects of Favour and Competition are at an End; the Tradition of his Friendships and his Enmities has perished; his Works support no Opinion with Arguments, nor supply any Faction with Invectives; they can neither indulge Vanity, nor gratify Malignity, but are read without any other Reason than the Defire of Pleasure, and are therefore praised only as Pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by Interest or Paffion, they have past through Variations of Taste, and Changes of Manners, and, as they devolved from one Generation to another, have received new Honours at every Transmission.

But because human Judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon Certainty, never becomes infallible; and Approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the Approbation of Prejudice or Fashion: it is proper to inquire by what Peculiarities of Excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the Favour of his Countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just Representations of general Nature. Particular Manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular Combinations of fanciful Invention may VOL. II. delight

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delight a-while, by that Novelty of which the common Satiety of Life sends us all in quest; but the Pleasures of fudden Wonder are foon exhausted, and the Mind can only repose on the Stability of Truth.

Shakespeare is above all Writers, at least above all modern Writers, the Poet of Nature; the Poet that holds up to his Readers a faithful Mirrour of Manners and of Life. His Characters are not modified by the Customs of particular Places, unpractised by the rest of the World; by the Peculiarities of Studies or Profeffions, which can operate but upon small Numbers; or by the Accidents of tranfient, Fashions, or temporary Opinions: They are the genuine Progeny of common Humanity, fuch as the World will always supply, and Observation will always find. His Persons act and speak by the Influence of those general Paffions and Principles by which all Minds are agitated, and the whole System of Life is continued in Motion. In the Writings of other Poets a Character is too often an Individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a Species.

It is from this wide Extenfion of Design that fo much Inftruction is derived. It is this which fills the Plays of Shakespeare with practical Axioms and domestick Wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every Verse was a Precept; and it may be faid of Shakespeare, that from his Works may be collected a System of civil and economical Prudence. Yet his real Power is not shown in the Splendour of particular Passages, but by the Progrefs of his Fable, and the Tenour of his Dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by felect Quotations, will fuceeed like the Pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his House to Sale, carried a Brick in his Pocket as a Specimen.

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his Sentiments to real Life, but by comparing him with other Au

thours. It was observed of the ancient Schools of Declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the Student disqualified for the World, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet with in any other Place. The fame Remark may be applied to every Stage but that of Shakespeare. The Theatre, when it is under any other Direction, is peopled by such Characters as were never feen, converfing in a Language which was never heard, upon Topicks which will never arife in the Commerce of Mankind. But the Dialogue of this Authour is often so evidently determined by the Incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much Ease and Simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the Merit of Fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent Selection out of common Conversation, and common Occurrences.

Upon every other Stage the universal Agent is Love, by whose Power all Good and Evil is diftributed, and every Action quickened or retarded. To bring a Lover, a Lady and a Rival into the Fable; to entangle them in contradictory Obligations, perplex them with Oppositions of Interest, and harrass them with Violence of Defires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in Rapture, and part in Agony; to fill their Mouths with hyperbolical Joy, and outrageous Sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the Business of a modern Dramatist. For this Probability is violated, Life is misrepresented, and Language is depraved. But Love is only one of many Paffions, and as it has no great Influence upon the Sum of Life, it has little Operation in the Dramas of a Poet, who caught his Ideas from the living World, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew

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