made a fort of an essay towards it in his Discoveries, I will give it in his words : ८८ " I remember the players have often mentioned it a3 an honour to Shakespeare, that in writing (what" foever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My " answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! " which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told pofterity this, but for their ignorance, who " chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, " wherein he most faulted: and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. " He was, indeed, honeft, and of an open and free 66 nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and " gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that " facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should " be stopped: Sufflaminandas erat, as Augustus said of " Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would "the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell " into those things which could not escape laughter; " as when he faid in the perfon of Cæfar, one speak" ing to him, 66 Cæfar did never wrong, but with just cause. " And fuch like, which were ridiculous. But he re" deemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever 66 more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." As for the paffage which he mentions out of Shakespeare, there is fomewhat like it in Julius Cæfar, but without the abfurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have feen, as quoted by Mr. Jonfon. Besides his plays in this edition, there are two or three afcribed to him by Mr. Langbain, which I have never feen, and know nothing of. He writ likewife Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in stanzas, stanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonfon, there is a good deal in it: but I believe it may be as well expreffed by what Horace says of the firit Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models (or indeed translated them) in his epiftle to Augustus. -Naturâ fublimis & acer, Nam fpirat tragicum fatis & feliciter audet, As I have not proposed to myself to enter into a large and complete collection upon Shakespeare's works, fo I will only take the liberty, with all due fubmiffion to the judgment of others, to observe fome of those things I have been pleased with in looking him over. His plays are properly to be diftinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called histories, and even fome of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the feverer criticks among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, are all pure comedy; the rest, however they are called, have fomething of both kinds. It is not very easy to determine which way of writing he was most excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and though they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the fatire of the present age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleasing and a well-diftinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allowed by every body to be a master-piece; the character is always well sustained, though drawn out out into the length of three plays; and even the ac count of his death, given by his old landlady Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry the Fifth, though it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is, that though he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and in short every way vicious, yet he has given him so much wit as to make him almost too agreeable; and I do not know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diversion he had formerly afforded them, been forry to fee his friend Hal use him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of The Second Part of Henry the Fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windfor he has made him a deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow; he has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, defcribes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parson defcant very pleasantly upon them. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well op posed; the main design, which is to cure Ford of his unreafonable jealousy, is extremely well conducted. In Twelfth-Night there is something fingularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parafite and the vain-glorious in Parolles, in All's Well that Ends Well, is as good as any thing of that kind in Plautus or Terence. Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The conversation of Benedict and Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, and of Rofalind in As you like it, have much wit and sprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining: and, I believe, Thersites in Troilus and Cressfida, and Ape mantus in Timon, will be allowed to be mafter-pieces of i | of ill-nature, and fatirical snarling. To these I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice; but though we have seen that play received and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew performed by an excellent comedian, yet I cannot but think it was designed tragically by the author. There appears in it a deadly fpirit of revenge, fuch a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bloody designation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the stile or characters of comedy. The play itself, take it altogether, seems to me to be one of the most finished of any of Shakespeare's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unusual kind of bond given by Antonio, is too much removed from the rules of probability; but taking the fact for granted, we muft allow it to be very beautifully written. There is fomething in the friendship of Antonio to Baffanio very great, generous, and tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two passages that deserve a particular notice. The first is, what Portia says in praise of mercy, and the other on the power of musick. The melancholy of Jaques, in As you like it, is as fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if, what Horace says, 1 Difficile est proprie communia dicere, It will be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the feveral degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old, and common enough. -All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players; VOL. I. [M] Mewling Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : Sans teeth, fans eyes, fans taste, fans every thing. His images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you poffefs every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as strong and as uncommon as any thing I ever saw; it is an image of patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he says, She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i th bud, What |