Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/17

Rh individual; in thoe of Shakepeare it is commonly a pecies.

It is from this wide extenion of deign that o much intruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakepeare with practical axioms and dometick widom. It was aid of Euripides, that every vere was a precept; and it may be aid of Shakepeare, that from his works may be collected a ytem of civil and oeconomical prudence. Yet his real power is not hewn in the plendor of particular paages, but by the progres of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by elect quotations, will ucceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his houe to ale, carried a brick in his pocket as a pecimen.

It will not eaily be imagined how much Shakepeare excels in accommodating his entiments to real life, but by comparing hm with other authors. It was oberved of the ancient chools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the tudent diqualified for the world, becaue he found nothing there which he hould ever meet in any other place. The ame remark may be applied to every tage but that of Shakepeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by uch characters as were never een, convering in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will never arie in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often o evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is purued with o much eae and implicity, that it Rh