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Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

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When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No;" 'tis reply'd, "the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;

145

85

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore. What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

100

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul, proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav'n; Some safer world in depths of woods embrac'd 105 Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

90

95

Th' exceptions few; some change, since all began:
And what created perfect ?"-Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men forever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?
156
Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

150

159

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs. Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:

Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right is to submit,

To be, contents his natural desire,

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind; That never passion discompos'd the mind. But all subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elements of life. The gen'ral order, since the whole began, Is kept in Nature, and is kept in man.

165

170

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;

110

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky

VI.

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense Weigh thy opinion against Providence ; Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such, Say, "Here he gives too little, there too much;" Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,1 Yet cry, "If man's unhappy, God's unjust;" If man alone engross not Heaven's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there, Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his justice, be the god of God. In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

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120

And little less than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect happy in its own:
Is Heav'n unkind to men, and man alone?

180

185

210

215

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That chang'd through all, and yet in all the same; Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

270

275

280

VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends.
Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between
And hound sagacious on the tainted green :
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood :
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220
How instinct varies in the grov'lling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
"Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier,
Forever sep'rate, yet forever near!
Remembrance and reflection how ally'd;

What thin partitions sense from thought divide:
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?
VIII.

225

230

See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

235

240

All matter quick,2 and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progressive life may go !
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.-On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 245
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And, if each system in gradation roll

Alike essential to th' amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all

The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dig nity 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. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topic of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illumi nated. The effects of favor 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 1 universe

According to Jewish legend, the seraphs were angels who lived only a day, being consumed by fire in the ardor of their worship. See Longfellow's Sandalphon, which is based, in part, on this legend.

one generation to another, have received new honors 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 Shakspeare has gained and kept the favor of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but 10 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 15 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.

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25

Shakspeare 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, unpracticed 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 are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply 30 and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated and the whole system of life is con. tinued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakspeare it is commonly a species.

35

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakspeare with practical 40 axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakspeare that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the splendor of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable1 and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, 50 carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

45

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakspeare excels in accommodating his sentiments to real life but by comparing him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of 55 declamation that the more diligently they were frequented the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to every stage2 60 but that of Shakspeare. The theatre when it is under any other direction is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of man1 plot; story

2 Johnson means the modern stage only.

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Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obliga. tions, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many passions; and as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet who caught his ideas from the living world and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion, as1 it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. I will not say, with Pope, that every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find that any can be properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The choice is right when there is reason for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play or from the tale would be equally deceived. Shakspeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion; even where the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most frequent incidents, so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world. Shakspeare approximates the remote and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible its effects would probably be such as he has assigned; and it may be said that he has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies but as it would be found in trials to which it cannot be exposed.

1 according as

2 out of its orbit; irregular

This, therefore, is the praise of Shakspeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed 10 him to the censure of critics who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and Rymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman,1 and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended that Menenius, a sen- 15 ator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakspeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essen- 20 tial character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a 25 buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer not only odious but despicable; be therefore added drunkenness to his other 30 qualities, knowing that kings love wine, like other men, and that wine exerts its natural powers upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds. A poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, 35 satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.

Shakspeare, with his excellences, has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them in 40 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 45 candor 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 50 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 55 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 with1 See Dennis's On the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1711), and Rymer's A Short View of Tragedy (1693).

2 See Voltaire's "On Tragedy," in his Letters on the English (1733), and the Preface to Semiramis, Part 3 (1748); also "Dramatic Art," in his Philosophical Dictionary (176466), and the Letter to the French Academy (1776).

Claudius in Hamlet.

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 sake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work and in view of his reward, he shortened the labor to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood but of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavored, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators.1 We need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle,' when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the gothic mythology of fairies." Shakspeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet, and security with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure.

In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm: their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality, and reserve; yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought to choose the best.

In tragedy his performance seems constantly to 1 See Pope's Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1725).

2 In Troilus and Cresida, II, 2, 163-167. Hector was the bravest of the Trojan warriors in the Trojan War, which took place at least eight centuries before the time of Aristotle (384322 B. C.), the great Greek philosopher. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus, an ancient Greek hero, and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, are made contemporary with Oberon, Robin Goodfellow, and other characters of English folk-lore.

The days of ancient Greece with those of the Middle Ages.

be worse as his labor is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetic; but whenever he solicits his invention or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumor, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity.

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stub- 80 born, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.

Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures.

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40

But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain when he approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of great- 45 ness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. What he does best he soon ceases to do. He is not soft and pathetic without some idle conceit or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move than he counteracts him- 50 self; and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakspeare what luminous. vapors are to the traveller; he follows it at all 55 adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether 60 he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which 65 he will always turn aside from his career stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and

or

It will be thought strange that in enumerating the defects of this writer I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities,2 his violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and critics.

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to critical justice without making any other demand in his favor than that which must be indulged to all human excellence --that his virtues be rated with his failings; but from the censure which this irregularity may bring upon him I shall, with due reverence to that learning which I must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their laws: nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. No other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled; he does not endeavor to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events and Shakspeare is the poet of nature but his plan has commonly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard; and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the poet than pleasure to the auditor.

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The critics hold it impossible that an action of months or years can 1 The beautiful Queen of Egypt for whom Antony gave up his share in the Poman government. The subtitle of Dryden's All for Love, which deals with the love of Antony and Cleopatra, is The World Well Lost.

2 The law of dramatic unities that in a drama the action must spring from a single controlling purpose and be represented as occurring in one place, that the supposed time within which the action develops must not exceed the actual time of performance, and that the scene must not shift from place to place.

3 connected; linked

1

Pierre Corneille (1606-84), a noted French dramatist, whose late plays conformed rather closely to the classical rule regarding unitles of place, time, and action.