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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, unpractised by the rest 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, such as the world will always supply, and obfervation 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 those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extenfion of defign that so much inftruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and, the tenour of his dia*logue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotatations, will fucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his houfe to fale, carried a brick in his pocket as a fpecimen.

It will not eafily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the ftudent difqualified 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 fuch characters as were never feen, converfing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often fo 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 felection out of common converfation, and common occurrences.

Upon every other stage the univerfal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is diftributed, and every action quickened and retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppofitions of intereft, and harrafs 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 diftreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability is violated, life is misreprefented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many paffions, 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

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world, and exhibited only what he faw before him. He knew, that any other paffion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a caufe of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not easily dif criminated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his perfonages more diftinct from each other. I will not fay with Pope, that every speech may be affigned to the proper fpeaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing ,characteristical; but, perhaps, though fome 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 dwarf; and he that fhould form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no heroes; his (cenes 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 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 reprefents will not happen, but if it were poffible, its effects would be probably fuch as he has affigned; 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 expofed.

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 fcenes from which a hermit may eftimate the transactions of the world, and a confeffor predict the progress of the paffions.

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 cenfures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a fenator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish Ufurper is reprefented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preferves the effential character, is not very careful of diftinctions fuperinduced and adventitious. His ftory requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all difpofiti. ons; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the fenate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to fhew 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 it natural power upon kings. Thefe are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the cafual diftinction of country and condition, as a painter, fatisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.

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The cenfure which he has incurred by mixing comic and tragic fcenes, as it extends to all his works, deferves more confideration. Let the fact be firft ftated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous or critical fenfe either tragedies or comedies, but compofitions of a diftinct kind; exhibiting the real ftate of fublunary 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 fame time, the reveller is hafting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is fometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without defign.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and cafualties, the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prefcribed, felected fome the crimes of men, and fome their abfurdities; fome the momentous viciffitudes of life, and fome the lighter occurrences; fome the terrors of distress, and fome the gaieties of profperity. Thus rofe 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 fo little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a fingle writer who attempted both.

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and forrow not only in one mind but in one compofition. Almost all his plays are divided between ferious and ludicrous cha racters, and, in the fucceffive evolutions of the defign, fometimes produce seriousness and forrow, and fometimes levity and laughter.

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