Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/19

Rh be properly transferred from the preent poeor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reaon for choice.

Other dramatits 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 hould form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakepeare has no heroes; his cenes are occupied only by men, who act and peak as the reader thinks that he hould himelf have poken or acted on the ame occaion: even where the agency is upernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers diguie the mot natural paions and mot frequent incidents; o that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakepeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he repreents will not happen, but if it were poible, its effects would probably be uch as he has aigned; and it may be aid, that he has not only hewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be expoed.

This therefore is the praie of Shakepeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raie up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ectaies, by reading human entiments in human language; by cenes from which a Rh