all thefe points, anfwered Cyrus, and feveral others the King ran over to him, he has not spoke one word, and they are all new to me. And what has he taught you then? To exercife my arms, replies the young Prince, to ride, to draw the bow, to call a fpear, to form a camp, to draw the plan of a fortification, to range my troops in order of battle, to make a review, to fee that they march, file off, and encamp. Cambyfes fmiled, and let his fon fee, that he had learnt nothing of what was most effential to the making of a good officer, and an able general; and taught him far more in one convertation, which cetainly deferves well to be ftudied by young gentlemen that are defigned for the army, than his famous mafter had done in many years. Every profeffion is liable to the fame inconvenience, either from our not being fufficiently attentive to the principal end we fhould have in view in our applications to it, or from taking cuftom for our guide, and blindly following the footsteps of others, who have gone before us. There is nothing more useful than the knowledge of history. But if we reft fatisfied in loading our memory with a multitude of facts of no great curiofity or importance, if we dwell only upon dates and difficulties in chronology or geography, and take no pains to get acquainted with the genius, manners, and characters of the great men we read of, we shall have learnt a great deal, and know but very little. A treatife of rhetoric may be extenfive, enter into a long detail of precept, define very exactly every trope and figure, explain well their differences, and largely treat fuch questions as were warmly debated by the rhetoricians of old; and with all this be very like that difcourfe of rhetoric Tully fpeaks of, which was only fit to teach people not to speak at all, or not to the purpofe, Scripfit artem rhetoricam Cleanthes, fed fic, ut, fi quis obmutefcere concupierit, mbil aliud legere debeat. In philofophy one might spend abundance of time in knotty and abftrufe difputes, and even learn a great many fine and curious things, and at the fame time neglect the effential part of the study, which is to form the judgment and direct the manners. In a word, the moft neceffary qualification, not only in the art of fpeaking and the fciences, but in the whole conduct of our life, is that tafte, prudence, and difcretion, which upon all fubjects and on every $233. DR. JOHNSON's Preface to his Edition of SHAKESPEARE. That praifes are without reafon lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by thofe, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the he refies of paradox; or thofe, who, being forced by difappointment upon confolatory expedients, are willing to hope from po terity what the prefent age refufes, and flatter themselves that the regard, which is yet denied by envy, will be at laft beftowed by time. Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reafon, but from prejudice. Some feen to admire indifcriminately whatever has been long preserved, without confidering that time has fometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than prefent excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the fhade of age, as the eye furveys the fun through artificial opacity. The grea contention of criticifm is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living, we eftimate his powers by his wort pe formance; and when he is dead, we rate them by his beft. To works, however, of which the excellence is not abfolute and definite, ba. gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonftrative and fcientific, but appealing wholly to obfe vation and experience, no other teft can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long poffeffed they have often examined and compared; and if they perfist to value the poffeffion, it is becaufe frequent com parifons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep, or 3 mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains, and many rivers; fe, in the productions of genius, nothing can be flyled excellent till it has been com pared with other works of the fame kind. Demonftration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is difcovered in a long fuccellion of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined, that it was round or fquare; but whether it was fpacious or lofty muft have been referred to time. The Pythagorean fcale of numbers was at once difcovered to be perfect: but the poems of Homer we yet know not to tranfcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than tranfpofe his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrafe his fentiments. The reverence due to writings that have long fubfifted, arifes, therefore, not from any credulous confidence in the fuperior wisdom of paft ages, or gloomy perfuafion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the confequence of acknowledged and indubitable pofitions, that what has been longeft known has been molt confidered, and what is most confidered is best understood. The poet, of whofe works I have undertaken the revifion, may now begin to affume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of eftablished fame and prefcriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the teft of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from perfonal allufion, local cuftoms, or temporary opinions, have for many years been loft; and every topic of merriment, or motive of forrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obfcure the fcenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enemies has perished; his works Support no opinion with arguments, nor fupply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reafon than the defire of pleafure, and are therefore praifed only as pleafure is obtained: yet, thus unaffisted by intereft or pallions they have past through variations of taste and change of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every tranfmiffion. But becaufe human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is proper to enquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen. Nothing can pleafe many and please long, but juft reprefentations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty of which the common fatiety of life fends us all in queft; but the pleafures of fudden wonder are foon exhausted, and the mind can only repofe on the ftability of truth. Shakespeare is, above all writers, at leaft above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractifed by the reft of the world; by the peculiarities of ftudies or profeffions, which can operate but upon fmall numbers; or by the accidents of tranfient fashions or temporary opinions; they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, fuch as the world will always fupply, and obfervation will always find. His perfons act and fpeak by the influence of those general paffions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole fystem of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets, a character is too often an individual; in thofe of Shakespeare, it is commonly a fpecies. It is from this wide extenfion of defign that fo much inftruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestic wifdom. It was faid of Euripides, that every verfe was a precept; and it may be faid of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a fyftem of civil and œconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not fhewn in the fplendor of particular paffages, but by the progrefs of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by felect quotations, will fucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his houfe to fale, carried a brick in his pocket as a fpecimen. It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in accommodating his fentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was obferved of the ancient fchools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the ftudent difqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The fame remark may be applied to every ftage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by fuch characters as were never feen, converfing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arife in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often fo evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is purfued with fo much eafe and fimplicity, that it feems fcarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent felection out of common converfation and common occurrences. Upon every other ftage the univerfal agent is love, by whofe power all good and evil is diftributed, and every action quick ened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppofitions of intereft, and hartafs them with violence of defires inconfiftent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous forrow; to diftrefs them as nothing human ever was diftreffed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the bufinefs of a modern dramatist. For this, probability is violated, life is mifreprefented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many paffions; and as it has no greater influence upon the fum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he faw before him. He knew that any other paffion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a caufe of happiness or calamity. Characters, thus ample and general, were not eafily difcriminated and preferved; yet perhaps no poet ever kept his perfonages more diftinct from each other. I will not fay with Pope, that every fpeech may be affigned to the proper fpeaker, because many fpeeches there are which have nothing characteriftical; but, perhaps, though fome may be equally adapted to every perfon, it will be difficult to find any that can be properly transferred from the prefent poffeffor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reafon for choice. Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, hy fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous ro mances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that fhould form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceiv ed. Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and fpeak as the reader thinks that he should himfelf have spoken or acted on the fame occafion: even where the agency is fuper natural, the dialogue is level with lik Other writers difguife the most natural paffions and moft frequent incidents; fo that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shake fpeare approximates the remote, and fami. liarizes the wonderful; the event which he reprefents will not happen; but, if it wer poffible, its effects would probably be fac as he has affigned; and it may be fa, that he has not only fhewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it weeld be found in trials, to which it cannot be expofed. This therefore is the praise of Shakefpeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagina tion, in following the phantoms which other writers raife up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecflacies, by reading human fentiments in huma language, by fcenes from which a hermit may eftimate the tranfactions of the world, and a confeffor predict the progrefs of the paffions. His adherence to general nature has expofed him to the cenfure of critics, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and Rymer think is Romans not fufficiently Roman; and Voltaire cenfures his kings as not complete royal. Dennis is offended, that Meneris, a fenator of Rome, fhould play the bifoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish ufurper is reprefented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate ove accident; and if he preferves the effential 'character, is not very careful of diftinctions fuperinduced and adventitious. His for requires Romans or Kings, but he tha only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispotitions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the fenate-houfe for that which the fenate houfe would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to fhew an ufurper and a murderer not only odious, but defpicable: he therefore added drunkennefs to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wi like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet over look's the cafual diftinction of country and condition, as a painter, fatisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery. The centure which he has incurred by mixing comic and tragic fcenes, as it extends to all his works, deferves more conLderation. Let the fact be first stated, and then examined. and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by fhewing how great machinations and flender defigns may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general fyf tem by unavoidable concatenation. It is objected, that by this change of fcenes the paffions are interrupted in their progreflion, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at lal the Shakespeare's plays are not, in the ri- power to move, which conftitetes the pergorous and critical fenfe, either tragedies fection of dramatic poetry. This reafonor comedies, but compofitions of a diftincting is fo fpecious, that it is received as true kind; exhibiting the real ftate of fublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and forrow, mingled with endiefs variety of proportion, and innumerable modes of combination; and expreffing the courfe of the world, in which the lots of one is the gain of another; in which, at the fame time, the reveller is haitening to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend in which the malignity of one is fometimes defeated by the frolic of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are cone and hindered without defign. Out of this chaos of mingled purpofes and cafualties, the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prefcribed, felected fome the crimes of men, and fome their abfurdities; fome the momentous viciffitudes of life, and fome the lighter occurrences; fome the terrors of diftrefs, and fome the gaieties of profperity. Thus rofe the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compofitions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and confidered as fo little allied, that I do not recollect, among the Greeks or Romans, a fingle writer who attempted both. Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and forrow, not only in one mind, but in one compofition. Almoft all his plays are divided between ferious and ludicrous characters; and in the fucceffive evolutions of the defign, fometimes produce ferioufnefs and forrow, and fometimes levity and laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticifm will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticiim to nature. The end of writing is to inftruct; the end of poetry is to inftruct by pleafing. That the mingled drama may convey all the inftruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, becaufe it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, even by thofe who in daily experience feel it to be falle. The interchanges of mingled fcenes feldom fail to produce the intended viciffitudes of paffion. Fiction cannot move fo much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it muit be allowed that pleafing melancholy be fometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be confidered likewife, that melancholy is often not pleafing, and that the diflurbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure confifts in variety. The players, who in their edition divided our author's works into comedies, hiftories, and tragedies, feem not to have diftinguifhed the three kinds by any very exact or definite ideas. An action which ended happily to the principal perfons, however ferious or diftrefsful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us; and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow. Tragedy was not in thofe times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclufion, with which the common criticifm of that age was fatisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it afforded in its progrefs. History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological fucceffion, independent of each other, and without any tendency to introduce or regulate the conclulion. It is not always very nicely dif tinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, than in the hiftory of Richard the Second. But a history might be continued through M m 3 through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits. Through all thefe denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's mode of compofition is the fame; an interchange of ferioufnefs and merriment, by which the mind is foftened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or deprefs, or to conduct the ftory, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of eafy and familiar dialogue, he rever fails to attain his purpofe; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or fit filent with quiet expectation, in tranquillity without indifference. When Shakespeare's plan is underftood, moft of the criticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without impropriety, by two centinels. Iago bellows at Brabantio's window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern audience would not eafily endure; the character of Polonius is feafonable and ufefu!; and the Grave-diggers themselves may be heard with applaufe. Shakespeare engaged in dramatic poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the public judgment was unformed: he had no example of fuch fame as might force him upon imitation, nor critics of fuch authority as might refrain his extravagance; he therefore indulged his natural difpofition; and his difpofition, as Rymer has re. marked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes, with great appearance of toil and ftudy, what is written at laft with little felicity; but in his comic fcenes, he feems to produce, without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always ftruggling after fome occafion to be comic; but in comedy he feems to repofe, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragic fcenes there is always fomething wanting; but his comedy often furpaffes expectation or defire. His comedy pleafes by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy, for the greater part, by incident and action. His tragedy feems to be fkill, his comedy to be instinct. The force of his comic fcenes has fuffered little diminution, from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his perfonages act upon prir ciples arifing from genuine paffion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are na tural, and therefore durable: the adventi tious peculiarities of perfonal habits are only fuperficial dyes, bright and pleafing for a little while, yet foon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former luftre; but the discriminations of true paffion are the colours of nature: they pervade the whole mafs, and can only perifh with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compofitions of heterogeneous modes are difiolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform fimplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increafe, nor fuffers decay. The fand heaped by one flood is fcattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The ftream of time, which is continually wafing the diffoluble fabrics of other poets, pafles without injury to the adamant of Shakespeare. If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a ftyle which never becomes obfolete, a certain mode of phrafeology fo confonant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its refpective language, as to remain fettled and unaltered; this ftyle is probably to be fought in the common intercourfe of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modith innovations, and the learned depart from eftablished forms of fpeech, in hopes of finding or making better; thofe who wif, for diftinction forfake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conver fation above groffnefs, and below refinement, where propriety refides, and where this poet feems to have gathered his comic dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the prefent age than any other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deferves to be ftudied as one of the original maffers of our language. Thefe obfervations are to be confidered not as unexceptionably conftant, but as containing general and predominant truth, Shakefpeare's familiar dialogue is affirmed to be fmooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has fpots unfit for cultivation : his characters are praised as natural, though their fentiments are fometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is fpherical, though its furface is varied with protuberances and cavities. Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewife faults, and faults fufficient to ob fcure |