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grow mad, thus very naturally, in the general calamity of the storm, recurs to his own particular circumstances.

LEAR.

Spit fire, fpout rain;

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters;
I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children,
You owe me no fubmiffion. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your flave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man !
And yet I call you fervile minifters,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.

They must have little feeling that are not touched by this speech, so highly pathetic.

How fine is that which follows!

LEAR.

Let the great Gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes
Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee thou bloody hand,

Thou

Thou perjur'd, and thou fimular of virtue,
That art incestuous! Caitiff, shake to pieces,
That under covert, and convenient seeming,
Haft practis'd on man's life? Close pent up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask
These dreadful summoners grace !-I am a man
More sinn'd against than finning.

Thus it is that Shakespear redeems the nonsense, the indecorums, the irregularities of his plays; and whoever, for want of natural taste, or from ignorance of the English language, is insensible to the merit of these passages, is just as unfit to judge of his works, as a deaf man, who only perceived the blackness of the sky, and did not hear the deep-voiced thunder, and the roaring elements, would have been to describe the awful horrors of this midnight storm.

The French Critic apologizes for our persisting in the representation of Shakespear's plays, by saying we have none of a more regular form. In this he is extremely mif

taken;

4

!

taken; we have many plays written according to the rules of art; but nature, which speaks in Shakespear, prevails over them all. If at one of our theatres there were a set of actors who gave the true force of every fentiment, seemed inspired with the paffion they were to counterfeit, fell fo naturally into the circumstances and fituations the poet had appointed for them, that they never betrayed they were actors, but might sometimes have an awkward gesture, or for a moment a vicious pronunciation, should we not conftantly resort thither?If at another theatre there were a set of puppets regularly featured, whose proportions and movements were geometrically true, and the faces, the action, the pronunciation of these puppets had no fault, but that there was no expression in their countenance, no natural air in their motion, and that their speech had not the various inflexions of the human voice; would a real connoiffeur abandon the living actors for fuch lifeless images, because fome nice and dainty Critic pleaded,

2

pleaded, that the puppets were not fubject to any human infirmities, would not cough, sneeze, or become hoarfe in the midst of a fine period? or could it avail much to urge, that their movements and tones, being directed by just mechanics, would never betray the awkwardness of rusticity, or a false accent caught from bad education.

The dramatis perfonæ of Shakespear are men, frail by constitution, hurt by ill habits, faulty and unequal. But they speak with human voices, are actuated by human passions, and are engaged in the common affairs of human life. We are interested in what they do, or say, by feeling every moment, that they are of the fame nature as ourselves. Their precepts therefore are an instruction, their fates and fortunes an experience, their teftimony an authority, and their misfortunes a warning.

Love and ambition are the subjects of the French plays. From the first of these passions

F

many

many by age and temper are entirely exempted: and from the second many more, by situation. Among a thousand spectators, there are not perhaps half a dozen, who ever were, or can be, in the circumstances of the persons represented: they cannot sympathize with them, unless they have fome conception of a tender paffion, combated by ambition, or of ambition struggling with love. The fable of the French plays is often taken from history, but then a romantic passion is superadded to it, and to that both events and characters are rendered subservient.

Shakespear, in various nature wife, does not confine himself to any particular passion. When he writes from history, he attributes to the perfons such sentiments, as agreed with their actions and characters. There is not a more sure way of judging of the merit of rival geniuses, than by bringing them to the teft of comparison where they have attempted fubjects of a similar nature.

Corneille

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