and obfcurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preferve his comprehenfion of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceafed, let him attempt exactness; and read the commentators.

Particular paffages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal fubject; the reader is weary, he fufpects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been furveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remotenefs neceffary for the comprehenfion of any great work in its full defign and its true proportions; a close approach fhews the fmaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is difcerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to confider how little the fucceffion of editors has added to this authour's power of pleafing. He was read, admired, ftudied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allufions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce "that Shakespeare was the man, "who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, "had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All "the images of nature were ftill prefent to him, "and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : "When he defcribes any thing, you more than fee

66 it,

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

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 bombaft. But he is always great, when some great occafion is prefented to "him: No man can fay, he ever had a fit fubject "for his wit, and did not then raife himself as high "above the rest of poets,

66

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 muft 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 thofe works unworthy to be preferved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

3

Among

Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wifh 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 fkilful and the learned.

FINIS.