Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/26

14 If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation a tile which never becomes obolete, a certain mode of phraeology o cononant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its repective language, as to remain ettled and unaltered; this tyle is probably to be ought in the common intercoure of life, among thoe who peak only to be undertood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modih innovations, and the learned depart from etablihed forms of peech, in hope of finding or making better; thoe who wih for ditinction forake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a converation above grones and below refinement, where propriety reides, and where this poet eems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the preent age than any other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deerves to be tudied as one of the original maters of our language.

Thee obervations are to be conidered not as unexceptionably contant, but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakepeare’s familiar dialogue is affirmed to be mooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggednes or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has pots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praied as natural, though their entiments are ometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is pherical, though its urface is varied with protuberances and cavities. Shake-