there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatic exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful in the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of Cato?

superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary.

He that, without diminution of any other excel. lence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature, and instruct life.

Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost frighted at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame and strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence; as Eneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers.

Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakspeare, will easily, if they consider the condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance.

Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared to the state of the age in which he A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. lived, and with his own particular opportunities; It is therefore evident, that the action is not sup- and though to a reader a book be not worse or better posed to be real; and it follows, that between the for the circumstances of the author, yet as there is acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pass, always a silent reference of human works to human and that no more account of space or duration is to be abilities, and as the inquiry, how far man may extend taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is of a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire. any particular performance, curiosity is always busy Whether Shakspeare knew the unities, and reto discover the instruments, as well as to survey the Jected them by design, or deviated from them by workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, to original powers, and how much to casual and adand useless to inquire. We may reasonably sup- ventitious help. The palaces of Peru or Mexico were pose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if the counsels and admonitions of scholars and critics, compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet and that he at last deliberately persisted in a prac-who could forbear to view them with astonishment, tice, which he might have begun by chance. As who remembered that they were built without the use nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of action, of iron? and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakspeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticisms of Voltaire :

"Non usque adeo permiscuit imis Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli Serventur leges, malint a Cæsare tolli."

The English nation, in the time of Shakspeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been successfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and More by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham. Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The public was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still valued for its rarity.

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatic rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A may be produced against me; before such authori-people newly awakened to literary curiosity, being ties I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows question one of those that are to be decided by mere not how to judge of that which is proposed as its reauthority, but because it is to be suspected, that these semblance. Whatever is remote from common apprecepts have not been so easily received, but for pearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learnresult of my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrousing, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama; that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of

those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin

and Gay of Warwick, have made little impression; The work of a correct and regular writer is a garbe that wrote for such an audience was under the den accurately formed and diligently planted, varied necessity of looking round for strange events and with shades and scented with flowers: the composifabulous transactions, and that incredibility, by tion of Shakspeare is a forest, in which oaks extend which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief their branches, and pines tower in the air, interrecommendation of writings, to unskilful curiosity.spersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, bad they not held the thread of the story in their hands.

sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakspeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

The stories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time accessible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is supposed to be It has been much disputed, whether Shakspeare copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pam- owed his excellence to his own native force, or whephlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remem-ther he had the common helps of scholastic educabered the tale of Hamlet in plain English prose, tion, the precepts of critical science, and the examwhich the critics have now to seek in Saxo Gram- ples of ancient authors.

maticus,

His English histories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by North.

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakspeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.

There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakspeare wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages. Jonson, his friend, affirins, that he had small Latin, and less Greek; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions of Shakspeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be opposed.

Some have imagined, that they have discovered deep learning in many imitations of old writers; but the examples which I have known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such easy coincidences of thought, as will happen to all who consider the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences. I have found it remarked, that in this important sentence, Go before, I'll follow, we read a translation of, I præ, sequar. I have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, I cried to sleep again, the author imitates Anacreon, who had, like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion.

The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our author's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his The Comedy of Errors is confessedly taken from example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that the Menachmi of Plautus; from the only play of on our stage something must be done as well as said, Plautus which was then in English. What can be and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, how-more probable, than that he who copied that, would ever musical or elegant, passionate or sublime. have copied more; but that those which were not translated were inaccessible?

There are a few passages which may pass for imi tations, but so few, that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it.

Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our author's extravagancies are endured by a nation which has Whether he knew the modern languages is uncerseen the tragedy of Cato. Let him be answered, that tain. That his plays have some French scenes proves Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shak- but little; he might easily procure them to be writspeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beau- ten, and probably, even though he had known the ties which enamour us of its author, but we see no- language in the common degree, he could not have thing that acquaints us with human sentiments or written it without assistance. In the story of Romeo haman actions; we place it with the fairest and the and Juliet he is observed to have followed the Engmoblest progeny which judgment propagates by con-lish translation, where it deviates from the Italian; junction with learning; but Othello is the vigorous but this on the other part proves nothing against his ad vivacious offspring of observation impregnated knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what by genius. Cato affords a splendid exhibition of he knew himself, but what was known to his audience. eficial and fictitious manners, and delivers just It is most likely that he had learned Latin suffiand noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated, and armonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of Cato, but

e dunk on Addison.

ciently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman authors. Concerning his skill in modern languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of French or Italian

authors have been discovered, though the Italian the heart for the motives of action. All those inpoetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined to believe, that he read little more than English, and chose for his fables only such tales as he found translated. That much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly observed by Pope, but it is often such knowledge as books did not supply. He that will understand Shakspeare, must not be content to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning sometimes among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures of the shop.

There is, however, proof enough that he was a very diligent reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that he might very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authors were translated, and some of the Greek; the Reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topics of human disquisition had found English writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence, but success. This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating and improving it.

But the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own genius. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other might be carried. Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood. Shakspeare may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height.

By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. Rowe is of opinion, that perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for aught I know, says he, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, were the best. But the power of nature is only the power of using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity supplies. Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them. Shakspeare, however, favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his ideas, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he, like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better, as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply instructed.

quiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the causes, and were formed for such as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. Mankind was not then to be studied in the closet he that would know the world, was under the necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he could in its business and amusements.

;

Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured his curiosity, by facilitating his access. Shakspeare had no such advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. Many works of genius and learning have been performed in states of life that appear very little favourable to thought or to inquiry; so many, that he who considers them is inclined to think that he sees enterprize and perseverance predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and hindrance banish before them. The genius of Shakspeare was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned: the incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, as dew drops from a lion's mane.

Though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little assistance to surmount them, he has been able to obtain an exact knowledge of many modes of life, and many casts of native dispositions; to vary them with great multiplicity; to mark them by nice distinctions; and to shew them in full view by proper combinations. In this part of his perforinances he had none to imitate, but has himself been imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether from all his successors maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country.

more

Nor was his attention confined to the actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always some peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. It may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations preserve their reputation, and that the following generations of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion. The first, whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just, their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy sentiments acknowledged by every breast. Those of distinction which books and precepts cannot con- whom their fame invites to the same studies, copy fer; from this almost all original and native excel- partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one lence proceeds. Shakspeare must have looked upon age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their little, becomes at last capricious and casual. Shakcharacters from preceding writers, and diversify them speare, whether life or nature be his subject, shews only by the accidental appendages of present man- plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives ners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the the image which he receives, not weakened or dissame. Our author had both matter and form to pro-torted by the intervention of any other mind; the vide; for, except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which shewed life in its native colours.

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of

ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are complete.

Perhaps it would not be easy to find any author, except Homer, who invented so much as Shakspeare, who so much advanced the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his. He seems, says Dennis, to have been the very original of

them acquainted with the true state of Shakspeare's by the printer's negligence. Whoever has any of the text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt, and gave reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. He collated the old copies, which none had thought to examine before, and restored many lines to their integrity; but by a very compendious criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than of cure.

I know not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing the genuine from the spurious plays. In this choice he exerted no judgment of his own; the plays which he received, were given by Hemings and Condel, the first editors; and those which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were printed during Shakspeare's life, with his name, had been omitted by his friends, and were never added to his works before the edition of 1664, from which they were copied by the later printers.

folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce. I collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the first. Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyric in which he celebrated himself for his achievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation I have fre. quently concealed; but I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.

solicit favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he praised, whom no man can envy.

Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and This was a work which Pope seems to have thought faithless, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good unworthy of his abilities, being not able to suppress luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and his contempt of the dull duty of an editor. He under- escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertakstood but half his undertaking. The duty of a col-ing. So willingly does the world support those who lator is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks, is very necessary; but an emendatory critic would ill discharge his duty, without qualities very different from dulness. In perusing a corrupted piece, he must have before him all possibilities of meaning, with all possibilities of expression. Such must be his comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language. Out of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his author's particular cast of thought, and turn of expression. Such must be his knowledge, and such his taste. Conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses, and he that exercises it with most praise, has very frequent need of indulgence. Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an editor.

Confidence is the common consequence of success. They whose excellence of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude, that their powers are universal. Pope's edition fell below his own expectations, and he was so much offended, when he was found to have left any thing for others to do, that he passed the latter part of his life in a state of hostility with verbal criticism.

I have retained all his notes, that no fragment of so great a writer may be lost; his preface, valuable alike for elegance of composition and justness of remark, and containing a general criticism on his author, so extensive that little can be added, and so exact, that little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress, but that every reader would demand its insertion.

Pope was succeeded by Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsic splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. He collated the ancient copies, and rectified many errors. A man so anxiously scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did was commonly right.

In his report of copies and editions he is not to be trusted without examination. He speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies, when he has only one. In his enumeration of editions, he mentions the two first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the rest only deviate from it

Our author fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas Hanmer, the Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature for such studies. He had, what is the first requisite to emendatory criticism, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately discovered, and that dexterity of intellect which despatches its work by the easiest means. He had undoubtedly read much his acquaintance with customs, opinions, and traditions, seems to have been large; and he is often learned without show. He seldom passes what he does not understand, without an attempt to find or to make a meaning, and sometimes hastily makes what a little more attention would have found. He is solicitous to reduce to grammar, what he could not be sure that his author intended to be grammatical. Shakspeare regarded more the series of ideas than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.

Hanmer's care of the metre has been too violently censured. He found the measure reformed in so many passages, by the silent labours of some editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought himself allowed to extend a little further the licence, which had already been carried so far without reprehension; and of his corrections in general, it must be confessed, that they are often just, and made commonly with the least possible violation of the text.

But, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little authority. His confidence, indeed, both in himself and others, was too great; he supposes all to be right that was done by Pope and Theobald; he seems not to suspect a critic of fallibility, and it was but reasonable that he should claim what he so liberally granted.

As he never writes without careful inquiry and diligent consideration, I have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will wish for more.

Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. Respect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is thought of notes which he