grow mad, thus very naturally, in the general calamity of the ftorm, recurs to his own particular circumstances.

LEAR.

Spit fire, fpout rain ;

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters;

I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children,
You owe me no fubmiffion. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man!
And yet I call you fervile minifters,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.

They must have little feeling that are not touched by this speech, so highly pathetic.

How fine is that which follows!

LEAR.

Let the great Gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch,

That haft within thee undivulged crimes

Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee thou bloody hand,

Thou

Thou perjur'd, and thou fimular of virtue,
That art incestuous! Caitiff, fhake to pieces,

That under covert, and convenient seeming,
Haft practis'd on man's life? Clofe pent up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask
These dreadful fummoners grace!—I am a man
More finn'd against than finning.

Thus it is that Shakespear redeems the nonsense, the indecorums, the irregularities of his plays; and whoever, for want of natural taste, or from ignorance of the English language, is infenfible to the merit of these paffages, is just as unfit to judge of his works, as a deaf man, who only perceived the blackness of the fky, and did not hear the deep-voiced thunder, and the roaring elements, would have been to describe the awful horrors of this midnight storm.

The French Critic apologizes for our perfisting in the representation of Shakespear's plays, by faying we have none of a more regular form. In this he is extremely mis

taken;

taken; we have many plays written according to the rules of art; but nature, which fpeaks in Shakespear, prevails over them all. If at one of our theatres there were a fet of actors who gave the true force of every fentiment, feemed infpired with the paffion they were to counterfeit, fell fo naturally into the circumftances and fituations the poet had appointed for them, that they never betrayed they were actors, but might fometimes have an awkward gesture, or for a moment a vicious pronunciation, fhould we not conftantly refort thither?If at another theatre there were a fet of puppets regularly featured, whofe proportions and movements were geometrically true, and the faces, the action, the pronunciation of these puppets had no fault, but that there was no expreffion in their countenance, no natural air in their motion, and that their fpeech had not the various inflexions of the human voice; would a real connoiffeur abandon the living actors for fuch lifeless images, because fome nice and dainty Critic pleaded,

2

pleaded, that the puppets were not subject to any human infirmities, would not cough, fneeze, or become hoarfe in the midst of a fine period? or could it avail much to urge, that their movements and tones, being directed by juft mechanics, would never betray the awkwardness of rufticity, or a falfe accent caught from bad education.

The dramatis perfonæ of Shakespear are men, frail by constitution, hurt by ill habits, faulty and unequal. But they speak with human voices, are actuated by human paffions, and are engaged in the common affairs of human life. We are interested in what they do, or fay, by feeling every moment, that they are of the fame nature as ourfelves. Their precepts therefore are an inftruction, their fates and fortunes an experience, their teftimony an authority, and their misfortunes a warning.

Love and ambition are the subjects of the French plays. From the firft of thefe paffions

many by age and temper are entirely exempted: and from the second many more, by fituation. Among a thousand spectators, there are not perhaps half a dozen, who ever were, or can be, in the circumstances of the perfons reprefented: they cannot fympathize with them, unless they have fome conception of a tender paffion, combated by ambition, or of ambition struggling with love. The fable of the French plays is often taken from history, but then a romantic paffion is fuperadded to it, and to that both events and characters are rendered fubfervient.

Shakespear, in various nature wife, does not confine himself to any particular paffion. When he writes from history, he attributes to the perfons fuch fentiments, as agreed with their actions and characters. There is not a more fure way of judging of the merit of rival geniuses, than by bringing them to the test of comparison where they have attempted subjects of a fimilar nature.

Corneille