eches bombastic; he was guilty on
every page of "some solecism or some notorious flaw in sense."[13]

Langbaine, to be sure, defends him against Dryden's censure. But Dennis
regrets his ignorance of poetic art and the disadvantages under which he
lay from not being conversant with the ancients. If he had known his
Sallust, he would have drawn a juster picture of Caesar; and if he had
read Horace "Ad Pisones," he would have made a better Achilles. He
complains that he makes the good and the bad perish promiscuously; and
that in "Coriolanus"--a play which Dennis "improved" for the new
stage--he represents Menenius as a buffoon and introduces the rabble in a
most undignified fashion.[14] Gildon, again, says that Shakspere must
have read Sidney's "Defence of Posey" and therefore, ought to have known
the rules and that his neglect of them was owing to laziness. "Money
seems to have been his aim more than reputation, and therefore he was
always in a hurry . . . and he thought it time thrown away, to study
regularity and order, when any confused stuff that came into his head
would do his business and fill his house."[15]

It would be easy, but it would be tedious, to multiply proofs of this
patronizing attitude toward Shakspere. Perhaps Pope voices the general
sentiment of his school, as fairly as anyone, in the last words of his
preface.[16] "I will conclude by saying of Shakspere that, with all his
faults and with all the irregularity of his _drama_, one may look upon
his works, in comparison of those that are more finished and regular, as
upon an ancient, majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with a
neat, modern building. The latter is more elegant and glaring, but the
former is more strong and solemn. . . It has much the greater variety,
and much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them by
dark, odd and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us
with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed
and unequal to its grandeur." This view of Shakspere continued to be the
rule until Coleridge and Schlegel taught the new century that this child
of fancy was, in reality, a profound and subtle artist, but that the
principles of his art--as is always the case with creative genius working
freely and instinctively--were learned by practice, in the concrete,
instead of being consciously thrown out by the workman himself into an
abstract _theoria_; so that they