Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/77

Rh powers of Shakepeare, and who deires to feel the highet pleaure that the drama can give, read every play, from the firt cene to the lat, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is, once on the wing, let it not toop at correction or explanation. When his attention is trongly engaged, let it didain alike to turn aide to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightnes and obcurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preerve his comprehenion of the dialogue and his interet in the fable. And when the pleaures of novelty have ceaed, let him attempt exactnes, and read the commentators.

Particular paages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal ubject; the reader is weary, he upects not why; and at lat throws away the book which he has too diligently tudied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been urveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remotenes neceary for the comprehenion of any great work in its full deign and in its true proportions; a cloe approach hews the maller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is dicerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to conider how little the ucceion of editors has added to this author’s power of pleaing. He was read, admired, tudied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could Rh