The reverence due to writings that have long fubfifted arifes therefore not from any credulous confidence in the fuperior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy perfuafion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable pofitions, that what has been longest known has been moft confidered, and what is moft confidered is best understood.

The poet, of whofe works I have undertaken the revifion, may now begin to affume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of eftablished fame and prefcriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the teft of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from perfonal allufions, local cuftoms, or temporary opinions, have for many years been loft; and every topick of merriment, or motive of forrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obfcure 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 perifhed; his works fupport no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reafon than the defire of pleafure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unaffifted by intereft or paffion, they have past through variations of tafte and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every tranfmiffion.

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 reprefentations 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 delight awhile, by that novelty of which the common fatiety of life fends us all in queft; but the pleasures of fudden wonder are foon exhaufted, 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 mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the cuftoms of particular places, unpractifed by the reft of the world; by the peculiarities of ftudies or profeffions, which can operate but upon fmall 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 fupply, and obfervation will always find. His perfons act and Speak by the influence of thofe general paffions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole fyftem of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an

individual;

individual; in thofe of Shakespeare it is commonly a fpecies.

It is from this wide extenfion of defign that fo much inftruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domettick wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verfe was a precept; and it may be faid of ShakeIpeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not fhewn in the fplendor of particular paffages, but by the progrefs of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by felect quotations, will fucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his houfe to fale, carried a brick in his pocket as a fpecimen.

It will not eafily be imagined how much Shakefpeare excels in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was obferved of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student difqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he fhould ever meet in any other place. The fame remark may be applied to every ftage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by fuch characters as were never feen, converfing in à language which was never heard, upon topicks which will never arife in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often fo evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much eafe and fimplicity, that it [A 3] feems

feems fcarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent felection out of common converfation, and common occurrences.

Upon every other ftage the univerfal agent is love, by whofe 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 oppofitions of intereft, and harrafs them with violence of defires inconfiftent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous forrow; to diftrefs them as nothing human ever was diftreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the bufinefs of a modern dramatift. For this, probability is violated, life is mifreprefented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many paffions, and as it has no great influence upon the fum 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 faw before him, He knew, that any other paffion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not eafily difcriminated and preferved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his perfonages more diftinct from each other. I will not fay with Pope, that every fpeech may be affigned to the proper fpeaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though fome may be equally adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any that can - be

be properly transferred from the prefent poffeffor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reafon for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no heroes; his fcenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the fame occafion : even where the agency is fupernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers difguife the most natural paffions and moft frequent incidents; fo that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he reprefents will not happen, but if it were poffible, its effects would probably be fuch as he has affigned; and it may be faid, that he has not only thewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed. tut.

This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raife up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecftafies, by reading human fentiments in human language; by fcenes from which a [A4] hermit