ness of his persons. Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and though they allow Cob and Tib to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard, or with their rags: and, surely their conversation can be no jest to them on the theatre, when they would avoid it in the street. To conclude all; let us render to our prede-. cessors what is their due, without confining oursclves to a servile imitation of all they writ; and, without assuming to ourselves the title of better poets, let us ascribe to the gallantry and civility of our age the advantage which we have above them; and to our knowledge of the customs and manners of it, the happiness we have to please beyond them. PREFACE ΤΟ TROILUS AND CRESSIDA: CONTAINING THE GROUNDS OF CRITICISM IN TRAGEDY. THE poct schylus was held in the same veneration by the Athenians of afterages as Shakspeare is by us; and Longinus has judged in favour of him, that he had a noble boldness of expression, and that his imaginations were lofty and heroick: but on the other side Quintilian affirms, that he was daring to extravagance. It is certain that he affected pompous words, and that his sense too often was obscured by figures: notwithstanding these imperfections, the value of his writings after his decease was such, that his countrymen ordained an equal reward to those poets who could alter his plays to be acted on the theatre, with those whose productions were wholly new, and of their own. The case is not the same in England; though the difficulties of altering are greater, and our reverence for Shakspeare much more just, than that of the Grecians for Eschylus. In the age of that poet the Greek tongue was VOL. I. |