Thefe obfervations are to be confidered not as unexceptionably conftant, but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakefpeare's familiar dialogue is af firmed to be fmooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has fpots unfit for cultivation his characters are praifed as natural, though their fentiments are fometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is fpherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewife faults,, and faults fufficient to obfcure and overwhelm any other merit. I fhall fhew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superftitious veneration. No queftion can be more innocently difcuffed than a dead poet's pretenfions to renown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which fets candour higher than truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed moft of the evil in books or in men, He facrifices virtue to convenience, and is fo much more careful to please than to inftruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a fyftem of focial duty may be felected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop cafually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to fhew in the virtuous a difapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the clofe difmiffes them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and juftice is a virtue independent on time or place.

The plots are often fo loosely formed, that a very flight confideration may improve them, and fo carelessly purfued, that he feems not always fully to comprehend his own defign. He omits opportunities of inftructing or delighting, which the train of his ftory feems to force upon him, and apparently rejects thofe exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the fake of those which are more eafy.

It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found him

felf near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he fhortened the labour to fnatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should moft vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without fcruple, the customs, inftitutions and opinions of another, at the expense 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 Hippolita 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.

In his comick fcenes he is feldom very fuccefsful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of fmartness and contests of sarcasm; 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 represented the real converfation of his time is not eafy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly fuppofed to have been a time of ftatelinefs, formality, and referve, yet perhaps the relaxations of that feverity were not very elegant. There muft, however, have been always fome modes of gaiety preferable to others, and a writer ought to choose the best.

In tragedy his performance feems conftantly to be worfe, as his labour is more. The effufions of paffion, which exigence forces out, are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he folicits his invention, or ftrains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meannefs, tedioufnefs, and obfcurity.

In narration he affects a difproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearifome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated

and inactive, and obftructs the progrefs of the action ; it fhould therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an incumbrance, and inftead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and fplendor.

His declamations or fet fpeeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and inftead of inquiring what the occafion demanded, to fhew how much his ftores of knowledge could fupply, he feldom escapes without the pity or refentment of his readers.

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy fentiment, which he cannot well exprefs, and will not reject; he ftruggles with it a while, and if it continues ftubborn, comprises it in words fuch as occur, and leaves it to be difentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.

Not that always where the language is intricate, the thought is fubtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial fentiments and vulgar ideas difappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by fonorous epithets and fwelling figures.

But the admirers of this great poet have never lefs reafon to indulge their hopes of fupreme excellence, than when he feems fully refolved to fink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatnefs, the danger of innocence, or the croffes of love." He is not long foft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no fooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rifing in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is fure to lead him out of his way, and fure to engulf him in the mire. It has fome malignant power over his mind, and its fafcinations are irrefiftible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his difquifition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in fufpenfe, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he

leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn afide from his career, or ftoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him fuch delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the facrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he loft the world, and was content to lose it.

It will be thought ftrange, that, in enumerating the defects of this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neg. lect of the unities; his violation of those laws which have been inftituted and established by the joint author. ity of poets and criticks.

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I refign him to critical juftice, without making any other demand in his favour, than that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be rated with his failings but, from the cenfure which this irregu larity may bring upon him, I fhall, with due reverence to that learning which I muft oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.

His hiftories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their laws; nothing more is neceffary to all the praise which they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the characters confiftent, natural, and diftinct. No other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be fought.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled; he does not endeavour to hide his defign only to discover it, for this is feldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature: but his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another, and the conclufion follows by eafy confequence. There are perhaps fome incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general fyftem makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place he has fhewn no regard; and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they ftand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Cor

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neille, they have very generally received, by difcovering that they have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.

The neceffity of obferving the unities of time and place arifes from the fuppofed neceffity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impoffible, that an action of months or years can be poffibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can fuppofe himself to fit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between diftant kings, while armies are levied and towns befieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they faw courting his mistress, fhall lament the untimely fall of his fon. The mind revolts from evident falfehood, and fiction lofes its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality.

From the narrow limitation of time neceffarily arifes the contraction of place. The fpectator, who knows that he saw the firft act at Alexandria, cannot fuppofe that he fees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in fo fhort a time, have tranfported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the mifery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without refiftance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of Shakespeare, that he affumes, as an unquestionable principle, a pofition, which while his breath is forming it into words, his underftanding pronounces to be falfe. It is falfe, that any reprefentation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited.

The objection arifing from the impoffibility of paffing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, fupposes, that when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the ftage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delufion, if delufion be admitted, has no certain