Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/16

4 But becaue 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 fahion; it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakepeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can pleae many, and pleae long, but jut repreentations 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 common atiety of life ends us all in quet; but the pleaures of udden wonder are oon exhauted, and the mind can only repoe on the tability of truth.

Shakepeare is above all writers, at leat 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 cutom of particular places, unpractied by the ret of the world; by the peculiarities of tudies or profeions, which can operate but upon mall numbers; or by the accidents of tranient fahions or temporary opinions; they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, uch as the world will always upply, and obervation will always find. His perons act and peak by the influence of thoe general paions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole ytem of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual;