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"it, you feel it too. Those who accufe him to "have wanted learning, give him the greater com"mendation he was naturally learned: he needed

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not the spectacles of books to read nature; he "looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot "fay he is every where alike; were he fo, I fhould "do him injury to compare him with the greatest "of mankind. He is many times flat and infipid; "his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his fe"rious fwelling into bombast. But he is always great, when fome great occafion is prefented to "him: No man can fay, he ever had a fit fubject "for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high "above the rest of poets,

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"Quantum lenta folent inter viburna cupreffi."

It is to be lamented, that fuch a writer fhould want a commentary; that his language fhould be. come obfolete, or his fentiments obfcure. But it is. vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by accident and time; and more than has been fuffered by any other writer fince the use of types, has been fuffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that fuperiority of mind, which defpifed its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preferved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

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Among thefe candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I fhould feel little folicitude about the fentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

FINI S.

F

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