from Mr. Rowgs account of his Life and Writings: Let us now take a fort view of him in his publick capacity, as a/Writer: and, from thence, the tranfition will be eafy to the State in which his Writings have been handed down to us.

No age, perhaps, can produce an author more various from himself, than Shakespeare has been univerfally acknowledged to be. The diverfity inftile, and other parts of compofition, fo obvious inthim, is as variously to be accounted for. His education, we find, was at beft but begun and he started early into a fcience, from the force of genius, unequally affifted by acquir'd improvements. His fire, fpirit, and exuberance of imagination gave an impetuofity to his pen: His ideas flowed from him in a stream rapid, but not turbulent; copious, but not ever overbearing its fhores. The eafe and fweetness of his temper might not a little contribute to his facility in writing: as his employment, as a Player, gave him an advantage and habit of fancying himfelf the very character he meant to delineate. He ufed the helps of his function in forming himself to create and exprefs that Sublime, which other actors can only copy, and throw out, in action and graceful attitude. But nullum fine veniâ placuit ingenium, fays Seneca. The genius, that gives us the greatest pleasure, fometimes ftands in need of our indulgence. Whenever this happens with regard to Shakespeare, I would willingly impute it to a vice of his times. We fee complaifance enough, in our own days,

paid to a bad tafte. His clinches, falfe wit, and defcending beneath himself, feem to be a deference paid to reigning barbarifm. He was a Sampfan in ftrength, but he suffer'd some. such Dalilab to give him up to the Philistines.

As I have mention'd the fweetnefs of his difpofition, I am tempted to make a reflection or two on a fentiment of his, which, I am perfuaded, came from the heart.

The man, that hath no mufic in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of fweet founds,
Is fit for treafons, ftratagems, and fpoils:
The motions of his fpirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no fuch man be trufted.

Shakespeare was all opennefs, candour, and complacence; and had fuch a fhare of harmony in his frame and temperature, that we have no reason to doubt from a number of fine paffages, allufions, fimilies, &c. fetched from mufick, but that he was a paffionate lover of it. And to this, perhaps, we may owe that great number of fonnets, which are fprinkled thro' his plays. I have found, that the ftanza's fung by the Grave-digger in Hamlet, are not of Shakespeare's own compofition, but owe their original to the old Earl of Surrey's poems. Many other of his occafional little fongs, I doubt not, but he purpofely copied from his contemporary writers; fometimes, out of banter; fometimes, to do them honour. The manner of their

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introduction, and the ufes to which he has affigned them, will easily determine for which of the reafons they are refpectively employed. In As you like it, there are feveral little copies of verfes on Rofalind, which are faid to be the right Butterwoman's rank to market, and the very falfe gallop of verfes. Dr. Thomas Lodge, a phyfician who flourished early in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and was a great Writer of the Paftoral Songs and Madrigals, which were fo much the ftrain of thofe times, compofed a whole volume of poems in praise of his mistress, whom he calls Rofalinde. I never yet could meet with this collection; but whenever I do, I am perfuaded, I fhall find many of our Author's Canzonet's on this fubject to be fcraps of the Doctor's amorous Muse: as, perhaps, those by Biron too, and the other lovers in Love's Labour's left, may prove to be.

It has been remarked in the course of my notes, that mufick in our author's time had a very different use from what it has now. At this time, > it is only employed to raise and inflame the pasfions; it, then, was applyed to calm and allay all kinds of perturbations. And, agreeable to this observation, throughout all Shakespeare's plays, where mufick is either actually used, or its powers defcribed, it is chiefly faid to be for thefe ends. His Twelfth Night, particularly, begins with a fine reflection that admirably marks its foothing properties.

That strain again ;-It had a dying fall.
Oh, it came o'er my ear like the fweet South,
That

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That breathes upon a bank of violets, ɔum or Stealing and giving odour!sses o

boyroido This fimilitude is remarkable, not only for the beauty of the image that it prefents, but likewife for the exactness to the thing compared. This is a way of teaching peculiar to the Poets; that, when they would defcribe the nature of any thing, they do it not by a direct enumeration of its attributes or qualities, but by bringing fomething into comparifon, and defcribing thofe qualities of it that are of the kind with thofe in the thing compared. So, here for inftance, the Poet willing to inftruct in the properties of mufick, in which the fame ftrains have a power to excite pleasure, or pain, according to that ftate of mind the hearer is then in, does it by prefenting the image of a sweet South wind blowing o'er a violet-bank; which wafts away the odour of the violets, and at the fame time communicates to it its own sweetness: by this infinuating, that affecting mufick, tho' it takes away the natural fweet tranquillity of the mind, yet, at the fame time, communicates a pleasure the mind felt not before. This knowledge, of the same objects being capable of raifing two contrary affections, is a proof of no ordinary progrefs in the ftudy of human nature. The general beauties of thofe two poems of MILTON, intitled, L' Allegro and Il Penforofo, are obvious to all readers, becaufe the defcriptions are the most poetical in the world; yet there is a peculiar beauty in those two excellent pieces, that will

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much enhance the value of them to the more capable readers; which has never, I think, been obferved. The images, in each poem, which he raises to excite mirth and melancholy, are exactly the fame, only fhewn in different attitudes. Had a writer, les acquainted with nature, given us two poems on thefe fubjects, he would have been fure to have fought out the moft contrary images to raise these contrary paffions. And, particularly, as Shakespeare, in the paffage I am now .commenting, fpeaks of thefe different effects in mufick; fo Milton has brought it into each poem as the exciter of each affection: and left we fhould mistake him, as meaning that different airs had this different power, (which every fidler is proud to have you understand,) he gives the image of those felf-fame ftrains that Orpheus used to regain Eurydice, as proper both to excite mirth and melancholy.. But Milton moft induftriously copied the conduct of our Shakespeare, in paffages that fhewed an intimate acquaintance with nature and science.

→ I have not thought it out of my province, whenever occafion offered, to take notice of fome of our Poet's grand touches of nature: Some, that odo onot appear fuperficially fuch; but in which he seems the moft deeply inftructed; and to which, no doubt, he has fo much owed that chappy prefervation of his Characters, for which he fis juftly celebrated. If he was not acquainted with the rules as delivered by Horace, his own lliw 2nd) 959g moltoja 4 #

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