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INTRODUCTION.

R. Pope, in the preface to his edition of Shakespear, fets out with declaring, that, of all English poets, this author offers the fullest and fairest subject for criticism. Animated by an opinion of fuch authority, fome of the most learned and ingenious of our critics have made correct editions of his works, and enriched them with notes. The fuperiority of talents and learning, which I acknowledge in these editors, leaves me no room to entertain the vain prefumption of attempting to correct any passages of this ce◄ lebrated Author; but the whole, as corrected and elucidated by Them, lies open to a thorough enquiry into the genius of our great English claffic. Unprejudiced and candid Judgment will be the surest basis of his fame. A

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But he seems now in danger of incurring the fate of the heroes of the fabulous ages, on whom the vanity of their country, and the superstition of the times, bestowed an apotheofis founded on pretenfions to achieve ments beyond human capacity, by which they loft in a more sceptical and critical age, the glory due to them for what they had really done; and all the veneration they had obtained, was afcribed to ignorant credulity, and national prepoffeffion. Our Shakespear, whofe very faults pass here unquestioned, or are perhaps confecrated through the enthufiafm of his admirers, and the veneration paid to long-established fame, is by a great wit, a great critic, and a great poet of a neighbouring nation, treated as a writer of monstrous Farces, called by him Tragedies; and barbarifm and ignorance are attributed to the nation, by which he is admired. Yet if wits, poets, critics, could ever be charged with prefumption, one might fay there was fome degree of it in pronouncing, that, in a country where Sophocles and Euripides are as well understood

understood as in any part of Europe, the perfections of dramatic poetry should be as little comprehended as among the Chinese.

Learning here is not confined to ecclefiaf tics, or a few lettered fages and academics: every English gentleman has an education, which gives him an early acquaintance with the writings of the ancients. His knowledge of polite literature does not begin with that period, which Mr. de Voltaire calls Le Siecle de Louis quatorze. Before he is admitted as a spectator at the theatre in London, it is probable he has already heard the tragic muse as she spoke at Athens, and as she now speaks at Paris, or in Italy; and he can difcern between the natural language, in which the once addreffed the human heart, and the artificial dialect which he has acquired from the prejudices of a particular nation, or the jargon caught from the tone of a court. In order to please upon the French ftage, every perfon of every age and nation was made to adopt French manners.

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