то DAVID GARRICK, Efq. THERE is no perfon whole patron age Work of this kind may so properly claim, as Your's; Your private life having done so much honour to the moral part, and Your public one luch justice to the principal Characters, represented in our Author's writings. Your action has been a better comment on his Text, than all his Editors have been able to fupply. You mark his beauties; They but clear his blots. You impress us with the living spirit ; They only present us the dead letter. There is one striking similarity between Shakespeare and You, in a very uncommon particular: He is the only Dramatic Writer, who ever alike ex celled in Tragedy and Comedy; and we may without flattery venture to affim, That you are the only Performer who ever appeared with equal advantage, both in the Sock and Bufkin. If I had an higher opinion of this Work than I have, I should have still but an higher inducement for addressing it to You. From this confideration You are bound to receive it, with all its im perfections on its head, being offered as a tribute of that friendship and esteem with which I have the honour to be, : PREFACE. A MONG the many writers of our nation, who have by their talents contributed to entertain, inform, or improve our minds, no one has fo happily or universally fucceeded, as he whom we may justly stile our first, our greatest Poet, Shakespeare. For more than a century and a half, this Author has been the delight of the Ingenious, the text of the Moralist, and the study of the Philosopher. Even his cotemporary writers have ingenuously yielded their plaudit to his fame, as not presuming it could lessen theirs, set at so great a distance. Such superior excellence could never be brought into a comparative light; and jealousy is dumb, when competition must be vain. For him, then, they chearfully twined the laurel-wreath, and unrepining placed it on his brow; where it will ever bloom, while sense, taste, and natural feelings of the heart, shall remain amongst the characteristics of this, or any other nation, that can be able to construe his language. He is a Claffic, and cotemporary with all ages. True Nature's Drama represents all time; A 3 But But amidst all this burst of applause, one single But as it may shew more, impartiality upon tient or modern, the most of an original. imagination is rich and strong: he paints " the "the Pictures of Albanus, than this Poet gives "to those that attend on Cleopatra, in his de"scription of the pomp with which that Queen " presents herself to Mark Antony, on the "banks of the Cydnus. 1. The reputation of this Author is so great, "that I shall not be furprized if you suspect me of exaggeration in this account of him. Those of our nation who have ever mentioned him, have been content to praise, without being capable of judging sufficiently of bis merits - To the further honour of our Author be it faid that a Lady * of diftinguished merit has lately appeared a champion in his cause, against this minor critic, this minute philofopher, this fly upon a pillar of St. Paul's. It was her example which has stirred up my emulation to this attempt; for I own that I am ambitious of the honour of appearing to think, at least, though I despair of the success of writing, like her. Mr. Pope, in the Preface to his edition of this Author, says, "Of all the English Poets, "Shakespeare must be confessed to be the faireft "and fullest fubject for Criticism, and to afford "the most numerous, as well as most confpi"cuous, instances, both of beauties and blemishes, "of all forts." And again : "I cannot, how"ever, but mention fome of his principal and characteristic excellencies; for which, not"withstanding his defects, he is justly and deservedly elevated above all other Dramatic Writers." • Mrs. Montag. |