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, unpractised by the rest of the world, by the peculiarities of studies or professions, 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, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design that fo much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestick wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakespeare, that from his works ma may be collected a fyr tem of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not shewn in in the splendour lendour of particular passages, but by the pro 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 easily 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 stage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peo. pled by fuch characters as were never seen, 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 feems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common conversation, and common oc

currences.

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 inconsistent 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 distreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist. For this probability is violated, life is mifrepresented, 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 calamity.

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 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 fame occafion : Even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions 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 assigned; 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

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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 fentiments 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.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the cenfure of criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and Rhymer think his Romans not fufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish Ufurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of diftinctions fuperinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the fenate-house for that which the fenate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to shew an ufurper and a murderer not only odious but despicable, he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the cafual distinction of country and condition, as as a painter, fatisfied with

the figure, neglects the drapery.

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