Page:The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare (1790) - Vol. 1a.djvu/17

Rh author ever gave up his works to fortune and time with so little care; no books could be left in hands so likely to injure them, as plays frequently acted, yet continued in manuscript: no other transcribers were likely to be so little qualified for their task as those who copied for the stage, at a time when the lower ranks of the people were universally illiterate: no other editions were made from fragments so minutely broken, and so fortuitously re-united; and in no other age was the art of printing in such unskilful hands.

"With the causes of corruption that make the revisal of Shakspeare’s dramatick pieces necessary, may be enumerated the causes of obscurity, which may be partly imputed to his age, and partly to himself. "When a writer outlives his contemporaries, and remains almost the only unforgotten name of a distant time, he is necessarily obscure. Every age has its modes of speech, and its cast of thought; which, though easily explained when there are many books to be compared with each other, become sometimes unintelligible, and always difficult, when there are no parallel passages that may conduce to their illustration. Shakspeare is the first considerable authour of sublime or familiar dialogue in our language. Of the books which he read, and from which he formed his stile, some perhaps have perished, and the rest are neglected. His imitations are therefore unnoted, his allusions are undiscovered and many beauties, both of pleasantry and greatness, are lost with the objeéts to which they were united, as the figures vanish when the canvas has decayed. "It is the great excellence of Shakspeare, that he drew his scenes from nature, and from life. He copied