d good scenes but not a good play; but Amicus
gathered that he would not permit anybody else to pass such a verdict
with impunity, for when he himself once ventured to say something
derogatory of _Hamlet_, Smith replied, "Yes, but still _Hamlet_ is
full of fine passages." This opinion of Shakespeare was of course
common to most of the great men of last century. They were not so much
insensible to the poet's genius as perplexed by it. His plays were
full of imagination, dramatic power, natural gifts of every kind--that
was admitted; but then they seemed wild, unregulated, savage--even
"drunken savage," to use Voltaire's expression; they were magnificent,
but they were not poetry, for they broke every rule of the art, and
poetry after all was an art. And so we find Addison at the beginning
of last century writing on the greatest English poets and leaving the
name of Shakespeare out; and we find Charles James Fox, a true lover
of letters, telling Reynolds at the close of the century that
Shakespeare's reputation would have stood higher if he had never
written _Hamlet_. Smith thought Shakespeare had more than ten times
the dramatic genius of Dryden, but Dryden had more of the poetic art.

He praised Dryden for rhyming his plays, and said--as Pope and
Voltaire used also to say--that it was nothing but laziness that
prevented our tragic poets from writing in rhyme like those of France.
"Dryden," said he, "had he possessed but a tenth part of Shakespeare's
dramatic genius, would have brought rhyming tragedies into fashion
here as they were in France, and then the mob would have admired them
just as much as they then pretended to despise them." Beattie's
_Minstrel_ he would not allow to be called a poem at all, because it
had no plan, no beginning, middle, or end. It was only a series of
verses, some of them, however, he admitted, very happy. As for Pope's
translation of the _Iliad_, he said, "They do well to call it Pope's
_Iliad_, for it is not Homer's _Iliad_. It has no resemblance to the
majesty and simplicity of the Greek."

He read over to Amicus Milton's _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and
explained the respective beauties of each; but he added that all the
rest of Milton's short poems were trash. He could not imagine what
made Johnson praise the poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew, and
compare it with _Alexander's Feast_. Johnson's praise of it had
induced him to read the poem over and with attention twice, but he
cou