your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you doe, buy. Censure will not drive a trade, or make the jacke goe. And though you be a magiftrate of wit, and fit on the stage at Black-friars, or the Cockpit, to arraigne plays dailie, know, these playes have had their triall already, and stood out all appeales; and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of court, than any purchased letters of commendation. It had bene a thing, we confeffe, worthie to have been wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; but fince it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends the office of their care and paine, to have collected and published them; and so to have published them, as where (before) you were abused with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious imposters, that exposed them, even those are now offered to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them: who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expreffer of it. His mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.9 But it is not our province, who onely gather his workes, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: and if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his friends, who, if you need, can bee your guides : if you neede them not, you can leade yourselves, and others. And fuch readers we wish him. 8 - as where-] i. e. whereas. MALONE. • Probably they had few of his MSS. STEEVENS. JOHN HEMINGE, MR. POPE'S PREFACE. IT T is not my design to enter into a criticisin upon this author; though to do it effectually, and not superficially, would be the best occafion that any just writer could take, to form the judgment and taste of our nation. For of all English poets Shakspeare must be confefsed to be the fairest and fullest subject for criticism, and to afford the most numerous, as well as most confpicuous instances, both of beauties and faults of all forts. But this far exceeds the bounds of a preface, the business of which is only to give an account of the fate of his works, and the disadvantages under which they have been transmitted to us. We shall hereby ex tenuate many faults which are his, and clear him from the imputation of many which are not : a design, which, though it can be no guide to future criticks to do him justice in one way, will at least be sufficient to prevent their doing him an injuftice in the other. I cannot however but mention some of his principal and characteristick excellencies, for which (notwithstanding his defects) he is justly and universally elevated above all other dramatick writers. Not that this is the proper place of praising him, but because I would not omit any occafion of doing it. If ever any author deserved the name of an original, it was Shakspeare. Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the fountains of nature, it proceeded through Ægyptian strainers and channels, and came to him not without some tincture of the learning, or some caft of the models, of those before him. The poetry of Shakspeare was inspiration indeed: he is not so much an imitator, as an instrument, of nature; and it is not fo just to say that he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him. His characters are so much nature herself, that it is a fort of injury to call them by so diftant a name as copies of her. Those of other poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they received them from one another, and were but multipliers of the same image : each picture, like a mockrainbow, is but the reflection of a reflection. But every fingle character in Shakspeare is as much an individual, as those in life itself: it is as impoffible to find any two alike; and such as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins, will, upon comparison, be found remarkably distinct. To this life and variety of character, we must add the wonderful preservation of it; which is fuch throughout his plays, that had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the perfons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker.1 The power over our passions was never poffeffed in a more eminent degree, or displayed in so different instances. Yet all along, there is seen no labour, no pains to raise them; no preparation to guide or guess to the effect, or be perceived to lead toward it: but the heart swells, and the tears burst out, just at the proper places: we are furprised the moment we weep; and yet upon reflection find the passion so just, that we should be furprised if we had not wept, and wept at that very moment. How aftonishing is it again, that the paffions directly oppofite to these, laughter and spleen, are no less at his command ! that he is not more a mafter of the great than of the ridiculous in human • nature; of our noblest tendernesses, than of our vainest foibles; of our strongest emotions, than of our idlest sensations! Nor does he only excel in the passions: in the coolness of reflection and reasoning he is full as admirable. His Sentiments are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every fubject; but by a talent very peculiar, something between penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of each argu * Addison, in the 273d Spectator, has delivered a fimilar opinion respecting Homer : "There is scarce a speech or action in the Iliad, which the reader may not ascribe to the person who speaks or acts, without seeing his name at the head of it." STREVENS. ment turns, or the force of each motive depends. This is perfectly amazing, from a man of no education or experience in those great and publick scenes of life which are usually the subject of his thoughts: so that he seems to have known the world by intuition, to have looked through human nature at one glance, and to be the only author that gives ground for a very new opinion, that the philosopher, and even the man of the world, may be born, as well as the poet. It must be owned, that with all these great excellencies, he has almost as great defects; and that as he has certainly written better, so he has perhaps written worse, than any other. But I think I can in some measure account for these defects, from several causes and accidents; without which it is hard to imagine that so large and so enlightened a mind could ever have been fufceptible of them. That all these contingencies should unite to his disadvantage seems to me almost as fingularly unlucky, as that so many various (nay contrary) talents should meet in one man, was happy and extraordinary. It must be allowed that stage-poetry, of all other, is more particularly levelled to please the populace, and its success more immediately depending upon the common fuffrage. One cannot therefore wonder, if Shakspeare, having at his first appearance no other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistence, directed his endeavours solely to hit the taste and humour that then prevailed. The audience was generally composed of the meaner fort of people; and therefore the images of life were to be drawn from those of their own rank: accordingly we find, that not our author's only, but almost all the old comedies have their scene among |