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to determine which way of writing he was moft excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and tho' they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the Satire of the prefent age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleafing and a well-diftinguish'd variety in thofe characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allow'd by every body to be a mafter-piece; the Character is always well-fuftain'd, tho' drawn out into the length of three Plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry V. tho it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is, that tho' 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 almost too agreeable; and I don't know whether fome people have not, in remembrance of the diverfion he had formerly afforded 'em, been forry to fee his friend Hal use him fo fcurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of the fecond part of Henry the fourth. Amongst other extravagancies, in the Merry Wives of Windfor, he has made him a Deer-ftealer, that he might at the fame time remember his Warwickshire 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 'em. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well oppos'd; the main defign, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealoufy, is extremely well conducted. In TwelfthNight there is fomething fingularly ridiculous and pleafant in the fantastical steward Malvolio. The parafite 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 converfation of Benedick and Beatrice, in Much ado about Nothing, and of Rofalind 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 allow'd to be mafter-pieces of ill-nature, and fatyrical fnarling. To thefe I might add, that incomparable character of Shylock the Jew, in the Merchant of Venice; but tho' we have feen that play receiv'd and acted as a comedy, and the part of the few perform'd by an excellent Comedian, yet I cannot but think it was defigned tragically by the Author. There appears in it a deadly fpirit of revenge, fuch a favage fiercenefs and fellnefs, and fuch a bloody defignation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the ftyle or characters of Comedy. The play itself, take it altogether, feems to me to be one of the most finish'd 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 Antonio, is too much remov'd from the rules of probability: But taking the fact for granted, we mutt allow it to be very beautifully written. There is fomething in the friendfhip 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 proprie communia dicere,

'twill be a hard task for any one to go beyond him in the defcription 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 meerly Players;
They have their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in bis time plays many Parts;
His Alts being feven ages. First the Infant
Mewling and puking in the 'nurfe's arms:

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And then, the whining School-boy with his satchel,
And fbining 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 Soldier
Full of frange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
Jealous in honour, fudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble Reputation

Ev'n 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 inftances;
And fo be plays his part. The fixth age fhifts
Into the lean and flipper'd Pantaloon,
With spectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide;
His youthful bofe, well fav'd, a world too wide
For his frunk fbanks; and his big manly voice,
Turning again tow'rd childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his found. Laft Scene of all,
That ends this ftrange eventful History,
Is fecond Childifbnefs and meer oblivion,
Sans teeth, fans eyes, fans tafte, fans every thing.

Vol. 2. p. 203.

His Images are indeed every where fo lively, that the thing he would reprefent ftands full before you,

and

and you poffefs every part of it. I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as ftrong and as uncommon as any thing I ever faw; '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 check: She pin'd in thought,
And fat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief.

What an Image is here given! and what a task would it have been for the greatest mafters of Greece and Rome to have exprefs'd the paffions defign'd by this sketch of Statuary! The ftyle of his Comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and easy in itself; and the wit most commonly sprightly and pleafing, except in those places where he runs into doggril rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and fome other plays. As for his jingling fometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common, vice of the age he liv'd in: And if we find it in the pulpit, made ufe of as an ornament to the Sermons of fome of the gravest Divines of those times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the Stage.

But certainly the greatnefs of this Author's genius do's no where fo 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 Tempest, Midfummer-Night's Dream, Mackbeth, and Hamlet. Of thefe, The Tempest, however it comes to be plac'd the first by the Publishers of his works, can never have been the first written by him: It feems 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:

tho'

tho' that was what, I fuppofe, he valu'd himself least K upon, fince his excellencies were all of another kind. I am very fenfible that he do's, in this play, depart too much from that likeness to truth which ought to be obferv'd in these fort of writings; yet he does it fo very finely, that one is eafily drawn in to have more faith for his fake, than reafon does well allow of. His Magick has fomething in it very folemn and very poetical: And that extravagant character of Caliban is mighty well fuftain'd, fhews a wonderful invention in the Author, who could ftrike out fuch a particular wild image, and is certainly one of the finest and most uncommon Grotefques that was ever feen. The Obfervation, which I have been inform'd (a) three very great men concurr'd in making upon this part, was extremely juft; That Shakespear bad not only found out a new Character in his Caliban, but had also devis'd and adapted a new manner of Language for that Character.

It is the fame magick that raises the Fairies in MidJummer Night's Dream, the Witches in Mackbeth, and the Ghoft in Hamlet, with thoughts and language fo proper to the parts they fuftain, and fo peculiar to the talent of this Writer. But of the two last of these Plays I fhall have occafion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. Shakespear. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of thefe by thofe rules whch are establish'd by Ariftotle, 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 liv'd under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, fo it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to confider him as a man that liv'd in a state of almost univerfal licenfe and ignorance: there was no establish'd judge

(a) Lord Falkland, Lord C. J. Vaughan, and Mr. Selden.

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