cellence. In the latter of these articles, perhaps, there is not any thing will more affift our judgment than a candid comparison (where the nature of the fubjects will bear it) between his, and fome other celebrated dramatic compofitions. It is idle to refer to a vague unrealized idea of Perfection: we may safely pronounce That to be well executed, in any art, which after the repeated efforts of great geniufes is equal to any thing which has been produced. We may fecurely applaud what the ancients have crowned, therefore fhould not withhold our approbation wherever we find our countryman has equalled the most admired paffages in the Greek tragedians; but we shall not do justice to his native talents, when they are the object of confideration, if we do not remember the different circumftances under which these writings were compofed. Shakefpear's plays were to be acted in a paltry tavern, to an unlettered audience, just emerging from barbarity: the Greek tragedies were to be exhibited at the public charge, under the care and aufpices of the magiftrates, 2 strates, at Athens; where the very populace were critics in wit, and connoiffeurs in public spectacles. The period when Sophocles and Euripides wrote, was that in which the fine arts, and polite literature, were in a degree of perfection which fucceeding ages have emulated in vain. It happened in the literary as in the moral world; a few fages, from the veneration which they had obtained by extraordinary wisdom, and a faultless conduct, rose to the authority of Legiflators. The practice and manner of the three celebrated Greek tragedians were by fucceeding critics established as dramatic laws: happily for Shakespear, Mr. Johnson, whofe genius and learning render him fuperior to a fervile awe of pedantic institutions, in his ingenious preface to his edition of Shakespear, has well obviated all that can be objected to our author's neglect of the unities of time and place. Shakespear's felicity has been rendered complete in this age. His genius produced works works that time could not destroy: but fome of the lighter characters were become illegible; these have been restored by critics, whose learning and penetration have traced back the vestiges of fuperannuated opinions and customs. They are now no longer in danger of being effaced, and the testimony of these learned commentators to his merit, will guard our author's great monument of human wit from the prefumptuous invafions of our rash critics, and the fquibs of our witlings; fo that the bays will for ever flourish unwithered and inviolate round his tomb; and his very spirit seems to come forth and to animate his characters, as often as Mr. Garrick, who acts with the fame inspiration with which He wrote, affumes them on the stage. After our poet has received fuch im-portant fervices from the united efforts of talents and learning in his behalf, fome apology seems neceffary for this work. But let it be remembered, that the most fuperb and lasting monument that ever was confecrated confecrated to Beauty, was that to which every lover carried a tribute. I dare hope to do him honour only by augmenting the heap of volumes given by his admirers to his memory. I will own, I was incited to this undertaking by great admiration of his genius, and ftill greater indignation at the treatment he has received from a French wit, who seems to think he has made prodigious conceffions to our prejudices in favour of the works of our countryman, in allowing them the credit of a few splendid paffages, while he speaks of every entire piece as a monftrous and ill-constructed farce. Ridiculously has our poet, and ridiculously has our tafte been represented, by a writer of univerfal fame; and through the medium of an almost universal language. Superficial criticisms hit the level of shallow minds, to whom a Bon Mot will appear Reason, and an epigrammatic Turn, Argu`ment; fo that many of our countrymen have haftily adopted this lively writer's opinion of the extravagance, and total want of defign in Shakespear's dramas. With the more learned, learned, deep, and fober critics, however, he lies under one confiderable disadvantage. For copying nature, as he found it, in the bufy walks of human life, he drew from an original, with which the Literati are feldom well acquainted. They perceive his portraits are not of the Grecian or of the Roman school; fo that after finding them unlike to the dignified characters preferved in learned museums, they do not deign to enquire, whether they refemble the living perfons, they were intended to represent. Among these connoiffeurs, whofe acquaintance with mankind is formed in the library, not in the street, the camp, or village, whatever is unpolished and uncouth passes for fantastic and abfurd, though, in fact, it is a faithful representation of a really existing character. But it must be acknowledged, that, when this objection is obviated, there will yet remain another cause of cenfure; for though our author, from want of delicacy or from a defire to please the popular tafte, thought |