INTRODUCTION.

MR

R. Pope, in the preface to his edition of Shakespear, fets out by declaring, that, of all English poets, this tragedian offers the fulleft and faireft fubject 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 paffages of this celebrated 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 furest basis of

his fame. He is 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 achievements beyond human capacity, by which they loft in a more-fceptical and critical age, the glory that was 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 pafs here unqueftioned, or are perhaps confecrated through the enthusiasm 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 the writer of monftrous 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 pronounc-ing, that, in a country where Sophocles and Euripides are as well understood as in any

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

Learning here is not confined to ecclefiastics, 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 at London, it is probable he has heard the tragic mufe 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 addreffed the human heart, and the artificial dialect which she has acquired from the prejudices of a particular nation, or the jargon caught from the tone of a court. To please upon the French stage, every person of every age and nation was made to adopt their manners.