to the proper fpeaker, because 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 tranfferred from the prefent poffeffor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reason for choice.

Other dramatifts can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence of depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceiv ed. Shakespeare 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 fupernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers difguise the moft natural paffions and moft frequent incidents; fo that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he reprefents 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 fhewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed.

This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecftacies, by reading human fentiments in human language; by fcenes from which a hermit may eftimate the tranfactions of the world, and a confeffor predict the progrefs of the paffions.

His adherence to general nature has expofed him to the cenfure of criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and Rymer think his Romans not fufficiently Roman; and Voltaire cenfures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a fenator of Rome, fhould play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish ufurper is reprefented as a drunkard. But Shakefpeare always makes nature predominate over accident ; and if he preferves the effential character, is not very

on men.

careful of diftinctions fuperinduced and adventitious. His ftory requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all difpofitions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the fenate-houfe for that which the fenate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to fhew an ufurper and a murderer not only odious, but despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the cafual diftinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery. The cenfure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes, as it extends to all his works, deferves more confideration. Let the fact be first stated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous and critical fenfe, either tragedies or comedies, but compofitions of a diftinct kind; exhibiting the real ftate of fublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and forrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion, and innumerable modes of combination; and expreffing the courfe of the world, in which the lofs of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hafting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is fometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without defign.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and cafualties, the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prefcribed, felected fome the crimes of men, and fome their abfurdities; some the momentous viciffitudes of life, and fome the lighter occurrences; fome the terrors of diftrefs, and fome the gaieties of profperity. Thus rofe the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compofitions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and confidered as fo little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a fingle writer who attempted both.

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and forrow not only in one mind, but in one compofition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the fucceffive evolu

tions of the defign, fometimes produce seriousnefs and forrow, and fometimes levity and laughter.

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticifm will be readily allowed: but there is always an ap peal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to inftruct; the end of poetry is to inftruct by pleaf ing. That the mingled drama may convey all the inftruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes, both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by fhewing how great machinations and flender defigns, may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoid able concatenation.

It is objected, that by this change of scenes the paf fions are interrupted in their progreffion, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at laft the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick po etry. This reafoning is fo fpecious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be falfe. The interchanges of mingled scenes feldom fail to produce the intended viciffitudes of paffion. Fiction cannot move fo much, but that the attention may be. cafily transferred; and though it must be allowed that, pleafing melancholy be fometimes interrupted by unwel come levity, yet let it be confidered likewife, that melan choly is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure confifts in variety.

The players, who in their edition divided our author's works into comedies, hiftories, and tragedies, seem not to have diftinguished the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas.

An action which ended happily to the principal per fons, however ferious or diftressful through its interme diate incidents, in their opinion conftituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow.

Tragedy was not in thofe times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclufion, with which the common

criticism of that age was fatisfied, whatever lighter plea fure it afforded in its progrefs.

Hiftory was a feries of actions, with no other than chronological fucceffion, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce or regulate the conclufion. It is not always very nicely diftinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, than in the history of Richard the Second. But a history might be continued through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits..

1 Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakeafpeare's mode of compofition is the fame; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by which the mind is foftaened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But fwhatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or deprefs, aor to conduct the ftory, without vehemence or emotion,, through tracts of eafy and familiar dialogue, he never ffails to attain his purpofe; as he commands us, we alaugh or mourn, or fit filent with quiet expectation, in: tranquillity without indifference.

When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the rcriticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away. The (play of Hamlet is opened, without impropriety, by two Ccentinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's window, without binjury to the fcheme of the play, though in terms which ia modern audience would not eafily endure; the char tacter of Polonius is feasonable and ufeful; and the bgrave-diggers themselves may be heard with applaufe.

Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the tworld open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment was unformed; The had no example of fuch fame as might force him cupon imitation, nor criticks of fuch authority as might rreftrain his extravagance: he therefore indulged his rnatural difpofition, and his difpofition, as Rymer has retmarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he feems to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after fome occafion to be comiek, but in comedy he feems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always fome

thing wanting, but his comedy often furpaffes expectation or defire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy feems to be skill, his comedy to be inftinct.

The force of his comick fcenes has fuffered little diminution from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his perfonages act upon principles arifing from genuine paffion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleafures and vexa tions are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable; the adven titious peculiarities of perfonal habits are only fuper. ficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet foon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former luftre; but the difcriminations of true paffion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mafs, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compofitions of heterogeneous modes are dif folved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform fimplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The fand heaped by one flood is feattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The ftream of time, which is con tinually washing the diffoluble fabricks of other poets, paffes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare. :

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a ftyle which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phrafeology fo confonant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its refpective language, as to remain fettled and unaltered; this ftyle is probably to be fought in the common intercourfe of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of ele gance. The polite are always catching modish innova tions, and the learned depart from eftablished forms of fpeech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wifh for diftinction forfake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above groffness and below refinement, where propriety refides, and where this poet feems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deferves to be ftudied as one of the original mafters of our language.