lencies deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of our language.

These observations are to be confidered not as unexceptionably conftant, but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: His characters are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obfcure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently difcuffed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which fets candour higher than truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He facrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is al

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ways careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or place.

The plots are often fo loosely formed, that a very flight confideration may improve them, and fo carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of inftructing or delighting which the train of his story feems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the fake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigoroufly exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly reprefented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without fcruple, the customs, inftitutions, and opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of poffibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. We need not wonder to find Hector

quoting quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies, Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the fame age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the paftoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with those of turbulence, violence and ad

venture.

In his comick scenes he is feldom very fuccessful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of fmartness and contest of farcafm.; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are fufficiently diftinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he reprefented the real conversation of his time is not eafy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly fupposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and referve, yet perhaps the relaxations of that feverity were not very elegant. There muft, however, have been always fome modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought to chuse the best.

In tragedy his performance feems conftantly to be worse, as his labour is more. The effufions of pafsion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he folicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obícurity.

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.

His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of inquiring what the occafion demanded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could fupply, he feldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader.

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to beftow upon it.

Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is fubtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by fonorous epithets and swelling figures.

But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge their hopes of fupreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by fudden frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and fure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fafcinations are irrefistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his difquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra

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