opriety
resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue.
He is, therefore, more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any
other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves
to be studied as one of the original masters of our language.

These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant,
but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's familiar
dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without
ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though
it has spots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praised as
natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions
improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface
is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them
in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity
or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently
discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is
due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in
books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much
more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without
any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of social duty
may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but
his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just
distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the
virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons
indifferently through right and wrong, and, at the close, dismisses them
without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance.
This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a
writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue
independent on time or place.

The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration
may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems, not always
fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of
instructing or delighting, which the train of his story seems to force
upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more
affecting, for the