that it was round or fquare; but whether it was fpacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean fcale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to tranfcend the common limits. of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than tranfpofe his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrafe his fentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long fubfifted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the fuperior wifdom of paft ages, or gloomy perfuafion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the confequence of acknowledged and indubitable pofitions, that what has been longest known has been moft confidered, and what is moft confidered is beft understood.

The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revifion, may now begin to affume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of an established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the teft of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allufions, local cuftoms, or temporary opinions, have for many years been loft; and every topick of merriment or motive of forrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obfcure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perifhed; his works fupport no opinion with arguments, nor fupply

• " Eft vetus atque probus, centum qui perficit annos." Hor. STEEVENS.

any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reafon than the defire of pleafure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unaffifted by interest or paffion, they have paft through variations of tafte and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every tranfmiffion.

But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakspeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty of which the common fatiety of life fends us all in queft; the pleafures of fudden wonder are foon exhaufted, and the mind can only repofe on the stability of truth.

Shakspeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractifed by the reft of the world; by the peculiarities of ftudies 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, fuch as the world will always fupply, and obfervation will

always find. His perfons act and fpeak by the influence of thofe 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 thofe of Shakspeare it is commonly a fpecies.

It is from this wide extenfion of defign that fo much inftruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakspeare with practical axioms and domeftick wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verfe was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakspeare, that from his works may be collected

fyftem of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not fhown in the fplendor of particular paffages, but by the progrefs of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by felect quotations, 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 easily be imagined how much Shakspeare excels in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was obferved of the ancient fchools 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 Shakfpeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by fuch characters as were never seen, converfing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will never arife in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often fo evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is purfued with fo

much ease and fimplicity, that it feems fcarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent felection out of common conversation, and common occurrences.

Upon every other ftage the univerfal agent is love, by whofe power all good and evil is diftributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppofitions of interest, 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 diftrefs them as nothing human ever was diftreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the bufinefs of a modern dramatift. For this, probability is violated, life is mifreprefented, 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 world, and exhibited only what he faw before him. He knew, that any other paffion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not eafily discriminated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his perfonages more diftinct from each other. I will not fay with Pope, that every fpeech may be affigned to the proper fpeaker, becaufe 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 prefent poffeffor to another claimant. choice is right, when there is reafon for choice.

The

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 a dwarf; and he that should form his expectation of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakspeare has no heroes; his fcenes are occupied only by men, who act and fpeak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the fame occafion: even where the agency is fuper-natural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural paffions and moft frequent incidents; fo that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakspeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were poffible, its effects would probably be fuch as he has affigned; and it may be faid, that he has not only fhown human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be expofed.

This therefore is the praife of Shakspeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raife up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecftafies, by reading human fentiments in human language; by fcenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confeffor predict the progrefs of the paffions.

7" Quærit quod nufquam eft gentium, reperit tamen, "Facit illud verifimile quod mendacium eft."

Plauti, Pfeudolus, A&t I. fc. iv. STEEVENS.