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Jonfon has made a fort of an effay towards it in his Difcoveries, I will give it in his words:

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thoufand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told pofterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumftance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted: and to juftify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this fide idola try, as much as any. He was, indeed, honeft, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expreffions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that fometimes it was neceffary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Auguftus faid of Haterius. His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been fo too! Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter; as when he said in the perfon of Cæfar, one speaking to him,

he replied,

Cafar, thou doft me wrong,

Cafar did never wrong, but with just caufe.

And fuch like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

As for the paffage which he mentions out of Shakespeare, there is fomewhat like it in Julius Cæfar, but without the abfurdity; nor did I ever meet with it in any edition that I have feen, as quoted

quoted by Mr Jonfon. Befides his plays in this edition, there are two or three afcribed to him by Mr Langbain, which I have never feen, and know nothing of. He writ likewife Venus and Adonis, and Tarquin and Lucrece, in ftanzas, which have been printed in a late collection of poems. As to the character given of him by Ben Jonson, there is a good deal in it: but I believe it may be as well expreffed by what Horace fays of the firft Romans, who wrote tragedy upon the Greek models (or indeed tranflated them) in his epistle to Au guftus:

-Natura fublimis & acer,

Nam fpirat tragicum fatis & feliciter audet!
Sed turpem putat in chartis metuitque lituram.

As I have not proposed to myself to enter into a large and complete collection upon Shakespeare's works, fo I will only take the liberty, with all due fubmiffion to the judgment of others, to obferve fome of thofe things I have been pleased with in looking him over.

His plays are properly to be diftinguished only into comedies and tragedies. Those which are called histories, and even some of his comedies, are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become fo agreeable to the English taste, that though the feverer criticks among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences feem to be better pleafed with it than with an exact tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windfor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, are all pure comedy;

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the reft, however they are called, have fomething of both kinds. It is not very eafy to determine which way of writing he was moft excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and though they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the fatire of the prefent age has taken the liberty to do, yet: there is a pleafing and a well-diftinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falftaff is allowed by every body to be a mafter-piece; the character is always well fuftained, though drawn out into the length of three. plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady, Mrs Quickly, in the firit act of Henry the Fifth, though it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he hath made of this. lewd old fellow, it is, that though he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and, in fhort, every way vicious, yet he has given him fo much wit as to make him almoft too agreeable; and I do not know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly afforded them, been forry to fee his friend Hal ufe him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of The Second Part of Henry the Fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in The Merry Wives of Windfor, he hath made him a deer-ftealer, that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickfhire profecutor, under the name of Juftice Shallow; he has given him very near the fame coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, defcribes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parfon defcant very pleasantly upon

them.

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 fomething fingularly ridiculous and pleasant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parasite and the vain-glorious 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 Shrew, is an uncommon piece of humour. The conversation of Benedict and Beatrice, in Much Ado About Nothing, and of Rosalind in As You Like It, have much wit and fprightlinefs all along. His clowns, without which character there was hardly any play writ in that time, are all very entertaining; and, I believe, Therfites in Troilus and Creffida, and Apemantus in Timon, will be allowed to be mafter-pieces of ill-nature, and fatirical fnarling. To thefe 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 a deadly spirit of revenge, fuch a favage fierceness and fellness, and fuch a bloody designation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the ftyle or characters of comedy. The play itself, take it altogether,

feems

*In 1701 Lord Lanfdowne produced his alteration of The Merchant of Venice, at the theatre in LincolnsInn-Fields, under the title of The Jew of Venice, and exprefsly calls it a comedy. Shylock was performed by Mr Dogget. REED.

feems to me to be one of the most finished of any of Shakespeare's. The tale, indeed, in that part relating to the cafkets, and the extravagant and unufual kind of bond given by Antonio, 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 fomething in the friendship of Antonio to Baffanio very great, generous, and tender. The whole fourth act (fuppofing, as I faid, the fact to be probable) is extremely fine. But there are two paffages that deferve a particular notice. The firft is, what Portia fays in praife of mercy, and the other on the power of mufick. The melancholy of Jaques, in As You Like It, is as fingular and odd as it is diverting. And if, what Horace fays,

Difficile eft propriè communia dicere,

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

All the world's a flage,

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 feven ages. Firft the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
And then, the whining School-boy with his farchel,
And fhining morning-face, creeping like fnail
Unwillingly to fchool. And then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his miftrefs' eye-brow. Then a foldier,
Full of frange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Fealous

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