the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will fucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to fale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

' It will not eafily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authours. 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 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 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 fimplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common converfation, and common occurrences.

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, 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 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 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 passions, 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 saw before him. He knew, that any other paffion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or caJamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. I will not say with Pope, that every speech may be affigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to every perfon, it will be difficult to find any, that can be properly transferred from the present poffeffor to another claimant. The choice. is right, when there is reason for choice.

Other

• 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 scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion: Even where the agency is fupernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural paffions and most frequent incidents; so 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 represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably, be fuch as he has afsigned; and it may be faid, that he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed.

This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extafies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confeffor predict the progress of the passions."

After bestowing this just elogium on Shakespeare, our editor proceeds to exculpate him from the censures of Rhymer, Denpis, and Voltaire; entering particularly into a defence of the tragi-comedy, or that mixed kind of drama, which hath given such great offence to the minor critics. He states the fact, and confiders it thus:

• Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compofitions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and forrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expreffing the course of the world, in which the lofs of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolic of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous viciffitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the terrors of distress, and some the gayeties of

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prosperity. Thus rose the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and confidered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both.

• Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and forrow not only in one mind but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce feriousness and forrow, and sometimes levity and laughter.

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticisin to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy and comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations and exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by fhewing how great machinations and flender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.

It is objected, that by this change of scenes the paffions are interrupted in their progreffion, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes feldom fail to produce the intended viciffitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be confidered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure confifts in variety.'

We do not feel the force of this reasoning; though we think the critics have condemned this kind of drama too severely. What follows also is to us a little problematical. Dr. Johnson prefers Shakespeare's comic scenes to his tragic: in the latter, he fays, there is always fomething wanting, while the former often furpafses expectation or desire. His tragedy seems to be skl, and his comedy instinct.' As this is a general affertion, unfupported by any particular examples, we cannot very easily controvert it; but we are apt to suspect it is founded in a great degree on the preference which the Editor himself may poffibly be difpofed to give to comedy in general. Different auditors, as he obferves, have different habitudes; so that, were we to put this affertion to the proof by particular applications, we should possibly find quot homines tot fententiæ.

After having enumerated the various excellencies of this great poet, our Editor proceeds to mention his faults; faults, says he, * fufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit.' The first defect he charges him with, is, indeed, a very capital one; from which we should be glad, and shall endeavour, to exculpate him.

• 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 always careful to shew in the virtuous a difapprobation 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.'

No question, says our Editor, in another place, can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretenfions to renown.' But, tho this be true, some tenderness surely should be felt for his probity. Shakespeare is here charged with 'facrificing virtue to convenience,' for no other reason than that he seemed more careful to please than instruct, and to write without any moral purpose. But if it be admitted, as our Editor actually admits, that a system of focial duty may be selected from his writings, and that his precepts and axioms were virtuous; we may justly ask, whether they are less so for dropping cafually from him? Must a writer be charged with making a facrifice of virtue, because he does not professedly inculcate it? Is every writer ex professo a parfon or a moral philosopher? It is doubtless always the moralift's duty, to strive at least, to make the world better; but we should think it no inconsiderable merit in a comic-poet, to be able to divert and amuse the world without making it worse; especially if he should occafionally drop fuch virtuous precepts and axioms, as would serve to form a system of focial duty. We are, for these reasons, fo far from thinking that the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate the fault here cenfured, that we think he stands in need of no other excuse than our Editor hath on another occasion made for him, viz. his ignorance of poetical composition. He did not know that the rules of criticism required the drama to have a particular moral; nor did he conceive himself bound, as a poet, to write like a philosopher, He carries his persons, therefore, indifferently through