ward, he shortened the labour, to fnatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he fhould most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly reprefented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without fcruple, the cuftoms, inftitutions, and opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of poffibility. Thefe faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. We need not wonder to find Hector quoting Ariftotle, when we fee the loves of Thefeus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the fame age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the paftoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and fecurity, with thofe of turbulence, violence and adventure. DL 9 355ND

In his comick fcenes he is feldom very fuccessful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of fmartnefs. and contefts of farcafin, their jefts are commonly grofs, and their pleafantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are fufficiently diftinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he reprefented the real converfation of his time is not eafy to.

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More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham. Greek was now taught to boys in the principal fchools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to profeffed fcholars, or tó men and women of high rank. The publick was grofs and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment ftill valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened to literary curiofity, being yet unacquainted with the true ftate of things, knows not how to judge of that which is propofed as its refemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childifh credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is, the vulgar. The study of those who then afpired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume:

The mind, which has feafted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no tafte of the infipidity of truth? A play which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impreffion; he that wrote for ftich an audience was under the neceflity of looking round for Itrange events and fabulous tranfactions, and that incredibility, by which

ma

maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unfkilful curiosity.

Our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is reasonable to fuppofe, that he chofe the most popular, fuch as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the ftory in their hands.

The ftories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in his time acceffible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is fuppofed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English profe, which the criticks have now to feek in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English hiftories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by verfions, they supplied him with new fubjects; he dilated fome of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been tranflated by North.

His plots, whether hiftorical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught than by fentiment or argumentation; and fuch is the power

of

of the marvellous even over those who defpife it, that every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular fpeeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in fecuring the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.

The fhows and buftle with which his plays abound have the fame original. As knowledge advances, pleasure paffes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our authour's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or proceffions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted fome vifible and difcriminated 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 example has prejudiced the nation, we ftill find that on our stage fomething must be done as well as faid, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however mufical or elegant, paffionate or fublime,

Voltaire expreffes his wonder, that our authour's extravagances are endured by a nation, which has feen the tragedy of Cato. Let him be answered, that Addifon fpeaks the language of poets, and ShakeSpeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauVOL. I.

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ties which enamour us of its authour, but we see no thing that acquaints us with human fentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the nobleft progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning, but Othello is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of obfervation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a fplendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers juft and noble fentiments, in diction eafy, elevated and harmonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the compofition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of Cato, but we think on Addifon,

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with fhades, and fcented with flowers; the compofition of Shakespeare is a foreft, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interfperfed fometimes with weeds and brambles, and fometimes giving fhelter to myrtles and to rofes; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diverfity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into fhape, and polished unto brightnefs. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incruftations, debafed by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

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