the fun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticifm is to find the faults of the mo derns, 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 abfolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to obfervation and experience, no other teft can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem, What mankind have long poffeffed they have often examined and compared, and if they perfift to value the poffeffion, 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; fo in the productions of genius, nothing can be filed excellent till it has been compared with other works of the fame kind. Demonstration immediately difplays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be eftimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is difcovered in a long fucceffion of endeavours. Of the first building that was raifed, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or fquare, but whether it was

4

fpacious

fpacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean fcale of numbers was at once dif covered to be perfect, but the poems of Homer we yet know not to tranfcend the common limits of hu man intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than tranfpofe his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrafe his fentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long fubfifted arifes therefore not from any credulous confidence in the fuperior wifdom of past ages, or gloomy perfuafion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the confequence 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 established fame and prefcriptive 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 forrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obfcure the scenes which they once illuminated. The ef[A 2]

fects

fects 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 fupply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any other reafon than the defire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unaffifted by intereft or pas fion, 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 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 juft 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 a-while, by that novelty of which the common fatiety of life fends us all in queft; but the pleafures 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, unpractifed by the reft 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 perfons act and speak by the influence of those 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; in thofe of Shakespeare it is commonly a species,

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 domestick wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verfe was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakefpeare, that from his works may be collected a fyftem of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not fhewn in the fplendour of particular paffages, but by the progrefs of his fable, and the tenour 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 fpe

cimen. 1.57 HA 61

It will not easily be imagined how much ShakeSpeare excells in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authours. It was obferved of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the ftudent difqualified for the world, becaufe he found nothing there which he should ever meet 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 fuch 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 To evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with fo much eafe and fimplicity, that it feems scarcely 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