crown in the end of the second part of Henry IV. Amongst other extravagancies, in The merry wives of Windfor, he has made him a deer stealer, that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickshire profecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow. He has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his antiquities of that county, describes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parfon defcant very pleafantly upon them. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various, and well opposed: the main defign, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealoufy, is extremely well conducted. In Twelfth night there is something fingularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parafite and the vainglorious in Parolles, in All's well that ends well, is as good as any thing of that kind in Plautus or Terence. Petruchio, in The taming of the forew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The converfation of Benedick and Beatrice, in Much ado about nothing, and of Rofalind in As you like it, have much wit and sprightliness all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining: and I belive Thersites in Troilus and Greffida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allowed to be masterpieces, of ill-nature and fatyrical snarling. To these I might add that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in The merchant of Venice. But though we have feen that play received and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew performed by an excellent comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the author. There appears in it fuch a deadly fpirit of revenge, fuch a favage fierceness and fellness, and fuch a bloody defignation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style or characters of comedy. The play itself, take it altogether, seems to me to be one of the most finished of any of Shakespear's. The tale indeed, in that part relating to the caskets, and the extravagant and unufual kind of bond given by ntonio, is too much removed from the rules of probability. But, taking the fact for granted, we must allow it to be very beautifully written. There is something in the friendhip of Antonio to Baffanio very great, generous, and tender.

tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two passages that deferve a particular notice The first is, what Portia says in praise of mercy, and the other, on the power of music. The melancholy of Jaques, in As you like it, is as fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if, what Horace fays,

Difficile est proprie communia dicere,

it will be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the description of the several degrees and ages of man's life, though the thought be old and common enough.

All the world is a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts;
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his fatchel,
And shining morning-face, creeping like fnail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a foldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in bonour, fudden and quick in quarrel;
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wife faws and modern instances ;
And so he plays his part. The fixth age shifts
Into the lean and flipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide;
His youthful hofe well fav'd, a world too wide
For bis fhrunk shanks; and his big manly voice,
Turning again tow'rd childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his found Last Scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is fecond childishness, and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, Sans eyes, fans taste, fans every thing.

Vol. 2. p. 246.

His

His images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it. I will venture to point out one more; which is, I think, as strong and as uncommon as any thing I ever saw. 'Tis an image of Patience. Speaking of a maid in love, he says.

-She never told her love ;

But let concealment, like a worm i th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She fat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at Grief.

Vol. 3. p. 110.

What an image is here given ! and what a task would it have been for the greatest masters of Greece and Rome to have expressed the paffions designed by this sketch of statuary! The style of his comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and easy in itself; and the wit most commonly sprightly and pleasing, except in those places where he runs into doggrel rhimes, as in The comedy of errors, and some other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he lived in. And if we find it in the pulpit, made use of as an ornament to the fermons of fome of the gravest divines of those times, perhaps it may not be thought too light for the stage.

But certainly the greatness of this author's genius does no where so much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loofe, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind, and the limits of the visible world. Such are his attempts in The tempeft, Midsummer-night's dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Of these, The tempest, however it comes to be placed the first by the publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him. It seems to me as perfect in its kind as almost any thing we have of his. One may obferve, that the unities are kept here with an exactness uncommon to the liberties of his writing; though that was what, I fuppofe, he valued himself least upon, fince his excelJencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible, that he does, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be observed in these fort

of

of writings; yet he does it so very finely, that one is easily drawn in to have more faith for his fake, than reason does well allow of. His magic has fomething in it very folemn and very poetical: and that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well sustained; shews a wonderful invention in the author, who could strike out fuch a particular wild image; and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon grotesques that was ever feen. The observation which I have been informed three very great men * concurred in making upon this part, was extremely just, That Shakespear had not only found out a new character in his Caliban, but had also devised and adapted a new manner of language for that character.

It is the fame magic that raises the fairies in Midsummer-night's dream, the witches in Macbeth, and the ghoft in Hamlet, with thoughts and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the talent of this writer. But of the two last of these plays I shall have occafion to take notice among the tragedies of Mr. Shakespear. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are established by Aristotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults. But as Shakespear lived under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that lived in a state of almost universal licence and ignorance: there was no established judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one confiders, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to intitle it to an appearance on the present stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder, that he should advance dramatic poetry fo far as he did. The fable is what is generally placed the first, among those that are reckoned the constituent parts of a tragic or heroic poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the contrivance and course of the whole; and with * Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Seiden,

the

the fable ought to be confidered, the fit disposition, or der, and conduct of its feveral parts. As it is not in this province of the drama that the strength and mastery of Shakespear lay, fo I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natur'd trouble to point out the feveral faults he was guilty of in it. His tales were feldom invented, but rather taken either from true history, or novels and romances: and he commonly made use of them in that order, with those incidents, and that extent of time in which he found them in the authors from whence he borrowed them. Almost all his historical plays comprehend a great length of time, and very different and distinct places: and in his Antony and Cleopatra, the scene travels over the greatest part of the Roman empire. But, in recompence for his carelessness in this point, when he comes to another part of the drama, The manners of his characters, in acting or speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shewn by the poet, he may be generally justified, and in very many places greatly commended. For those plays which he has taken from the English or Roman history, let any man compare them, and he will find the character as exact in the poet as the historian. He feems indeed fo far from propofing to himself any one action for a fubject, that the title very often tells you it is The life of King John, King Richard, &c. What can be more agreeable to the idea our hiftorians give of Henry VI. than the picture Shakespear has drawn of him! His manners are every where exactly the fame with the story; one finds him ftill described with fimplicity, passive fanctity, want of courage, weakness of mind, and easy fubmiffion to the governance of an imperious wife, or prevailing faction: though at the fame time the poet does justice to his good qualities, and moves the pity of his audience for him, by shewing him pious, difinterested, a contemner of the things of this world, and wholly refigned to the feverest difpenfations of God's providence. There is a short scene in the second part of Henry VI. which I cannot but think admirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murdered the Duke of Gloucester, is shewn in the last agonis on his deathbed, with the good King praying over him. There is so much terror in