Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/27

Rh Shakepeare with his excellencies has likewie faults, and faults ufficient to obcure and overwhelm any other merit. I hall hew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without enviou malignity or upertitious veneration. No quetion can be more innocently dicued than a dead poet’s pretenions to renown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which ets candour higher than truth.

His firt defect is that to which may be imputed mot of the evil in books or in men. He acrifices virtue to convenience, and is o much more careful to pleae than to intruct, that he eems to write without any moral purpoe. From his writings indeed a ytem of ocial duty may be elected, for he that thinks reaonably mut think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop caually from him; he makes no jut ditribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to hew in the virtuous a diapprobation of the wicked; he carries his perons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the cloe dimies them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer’s duty to make the world better, and jutice is a virtue independent on time or place.

The plots are often o looely formed, that a very light conideration may improve them, and o carelesly purued, that he eems not always fully to comprehend his own deign. He omits opportunities of intructing or delighting, which the train of his tory eems to force upon him, and apparently rejects thoe