ngest known has been most considered, and what is most considered
is best understood.

The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin
to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of
established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his
century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit[2].
Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local
customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every
topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial
life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once
illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the
tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works
support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with
invectives; they can neither indulge vanity, nor gratify malignity; but
are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are,
therefore, praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by
interest or passion, they have passed through variations of taste and
changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to
another, have received new honours at every transmission.

But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon
certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long
continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it
is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare
has gained, and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of
general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and, therefore,
few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular
combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty
of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the
pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only
repose on the stability of truth.

Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers,
the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful
mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the
customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by
the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon
small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary
opinions: they