who, when Will Shakespeare was fummoned, were immediately to present themselves, I am Shakespeare's boy, Sir. In time, Shakespeare found higher employment; but as long as the practice of riding to the play-house continued, the waiters that held the horfes, retained the appellation of Shakespeare's boys.

JOHNSON.

THAT

DR. JOHNSON's

PREFACE.

HAT praifes are without reafon lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by thofe, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the herefies of paradox; or thofe, who, being forced by disappointment upon confolatory expedients, are willing to hope from pofterity what the prefent age refufes, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at laft bestowed by time.

Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that_reverence it, not from reafon, but from prejudice. Some feem to admire indifcriminately whatever has been long preferved, without confidering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour paft than prefent excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the fhades of age, as the eye furveys the fun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticifm is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate them by his beft.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not abfolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonftrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to obfervation and experience, no other teft can be applied than length of duration and continuance of efteem. What mankind have long poffeffed, they have often examined and compared, and if they perfift to value the poffeffion, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favvol. I.

C

our. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep, or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; fo in the productions of genius, nothing can be ftyled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the fame kind. Demonftration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be eftimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is difcovered in a long fucceffion of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or fquare; but whether it was spacious or lofty muft 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 paraphrase his fentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long fubfifted arifes 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 established fame and prefcriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the teft of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from perfonal allufions, local customs, 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 obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendfhips and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor fupply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reason than the defire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as

pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by intereft or paffion, they have passed 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 Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can pleafe many, and pleafe long, but just reprefentations 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; but the pleasures of fudden wonder are foon exhausted, and the mind can only repofc on the ftability of truth.

Shakespeare 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 cuftoms of particular places, unpractifed by the reft of the world; by the peculiarities of ftudies or profeffions, which can operate but upon fmall 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 Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestick wisdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verfe was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a fyftem of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not fhewn in the fplendor of particular paffages, but by the progrefs of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recom

mend him by select quotations, will fucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his houfe to fale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student difqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he fhould ever meet in any other place. The fame remark may be applied to every ftage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by fuch characters as were never feen, 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 eafe and fimplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common converfation and common occurrences.

Upon every other ftage the universal 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 intereft, 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 distreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the bufiness of a modern dramatift. For this, probability is violated, life is mifrepresented, 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 difcriminated and preferved, yet perhaps, no poet ever kept his perfonages more diftinct from each other. I will not fay with Pope, that every speech may be affigned