Preface to Shakespeare | Page 5

authority as might
restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural disposition,
and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy. In
tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is
written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to
produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is
always struggling after some occasion to be comick, but in comedy he
seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to
his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but
his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases

by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by
incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be
instinct.
The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the
changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his
personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little
modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are
communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and
therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are
only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon
fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the
discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade
the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them.
The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by
the chance which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of
primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand
heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always
continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing
the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the
adamant of Shakespeare.
If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never
becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and
congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to
remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the
common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be
understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always
catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established
forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish
for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a
conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety
resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick
dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age
than any other authour equally remote, and among his other
excellencies deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of our
language.
These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably
constant, but as containing general and predominant truth.

Shakespeare's familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet
not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be
eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: His
characters are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes
forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is
spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities.
Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew them
in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious
malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more
innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little
regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than truth.
His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in
books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much
more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without
any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty
may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but
his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just
distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the
virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons
indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them
without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance.
This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a
writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue
independant on time or place.
The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration
may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that