y age
has its modes of speech, and its cast of thought; which, though easily
explained when there are many books to be compared with each other,
become sometimes unintelligible and always difficult, when there are no
parallel passages that may conduce to their illustration. Shakespeare is
the first considerable author of sublime or familiar dialogue in our
language. Of the books which he read, and from which he formed his
style, some, perhaps, have perished, and the rest are neglected. His
imitations are, therefore, unnoted, his allusions are undiscovered, and
many beauties, both of pleasantry and greatness, are lost with the
objects to which they were united, as the figures vanish when the
canvass has decayed.

It is the great excellence of Shakespeare, that he drew his scenes from
nature, and from life. He copied the manners of the world, then passing
before him, and has more allusions than other poets to the traditions
and superstition of the vulgar; which must, therefore, be traced, before
he can be understood.

He wrote at a time when our poetical language was yet unformed, when the
meaning of our phrases was yet in fluctuation, when words were adopted
at pleasure from the neighbouring languages, and while the Saxon was
still visibly mingled in our diction. The reader is, therefore,
embarrassed at once with dead and with foreign languages, with
obsoleteness and innovation. In that age, as in all others, fashion
produced phraseology, which succeeding fashion swept away before its
meaning was generally known, or sufficiently authorised: and in that
age, above all others, experiments were made upon our language, which
distorted its combinations, and disturbed its uniformity.

If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be imputed
to the nature of his work, which required the use of the common
colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases allusive,
elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every hour without
observing them; and of which, being now familiar, we do not suspect that
they can ever grow uncouth, or that, being now obvious, they can ever
seem remote.

These are the principal causes of the obscurity of Shakespeare; to which
might be added the fulness of idea, which might sometimes load his words
with more sentiment than they could conveniently convey, and that
rapidity of imagination which might hurry him to a second thought before
he had fully explained the fi