Grave-diggers themselves
may be heard with applause.

_Shakespeare_ engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before
him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; but publick
judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force
him upon imitation, nor criticks of such 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 heap 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