thefe a resemblance to celebrated perfons, throws them into their proper attitudes, and gives a faithful copy of the Coftumi of the age and country, his work will create fenfations of a different, but not lefs pleafing kind, than those excited by the admiration of exquifite beauty, and perfect excellence of workmanship. Perhaps He should rather be accounted a nice Virtuofo than a confummate Critic, who prefers the Poet or Sculptor's faireft idea to the various and extenfive merits of the hiftoric reprefentation.

Nothing great is to be expected from any set of artists, who are to give only copies of copies. The treasures of nature are inexhaustible, as well in moral as in phyfical fubjects. The talents of Shakespear were univerfal, his penetrating mind faw through all characters; and, as Mr. Pope fays of him, he was not more a master of our strongest emotions, than of our idleft fenfa

tions.

One cannot wonder, that endued with fo great

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great and various powers, he broke down the barriers that had before confined the dramatic writers to the regions of comedy, or tragedy. He perceived the fertility of the subjects that lay between the two extreams; he faw, that in the hiftorical play he could represent the manners of the whole people, give the general temper of the times, and bring in view the incidents that affected the common fate of his country. The Gothic muse had a rude spirit of liberty, and delighted in painting popular tumults, the progrefs of civil wars, and the revolutions of government, rather than a catastrophe within the walls of a palace. At the time he wrote, the wars of the Houses of York and Lancaster were fresh in mens minds. They had received the tale from fome Neftor in their family, or neighbourhood, who had fought in the battle, he related. Every fpectator's affections were ranged under the white or red Rofe, in whofe contentions. fome had loft their parents and friends, others had gained establishments and honours.

All

All 'the inducements which the Greek tragedians had to chufe their heroes from the works of the poets, who had fung the wars of Troy, and the Argonautic expedition, were still in greater force with our countryman to take his fubjects from the history and traditions of those more recent transactions, in which the fpectator was informed and interested more perfonally and locally. There was not a family fo low, that had not had fome of its branches torn off in the storms of these inteftine commotions: nor a valley fo happily retired, that at fome time, the foot of hoftile paces had not bruis'd her flow'rets. In thefe characters the rudest peasant read the fad history of his country: while the better fort were informed of the most minute circumstances by our chronicles. The tragedians who took their fubjects from Homer, had all the advantage a painter would have, who was to draw a picture from a ftatue of Phidias or Praxiteles. Poor Shakespear from the wooden images

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images in our mean, chronicles was to form his portraits. What judgment was there in discovering, that by moulding them to an exact resemblance he should engage and please! And what discernment and penetration into characters, and what amazing fkill in moral painting, to be able, from fuch uncouth models, to bring forth not only a perfect, but, when occasion required, a graceful likeness!

No

The patterns from which he drew, were not only void of poetical fpirit and ornament, but also of all historical dignity. The histories of those times were a mere heap of rude undigested annals, coarfe in their style, and crouded with trivial anecdotes. Tacitus had investigated the obliquities of our statesmen, or by diving into the profound fecrets of policy had dragged into light the latent motives, the fecret machinations of our politicians: yet how does he enter into the deepest mysteries of ftate! There cannot be a ftronger proof of

the

the fuperiority of his genius over the hiftorians of the times than the following instance.

The learned Sir Thomas More, in his history of Crook'd-Back Richard, tells, with the garrulity of an old nurse, the current ftories of this king's deformity, and the monftrous appearances of his infancy, which he seems with fuperftitious credulity to believe, to have been the omens and prognostics of his future villany. Shakespear, with a more philofophic turn of mind, confiders them, not as prefaging, but as inftigating his cruel ambition, and finely accounts in the following fpeeches for the afperity of his temper, and his fierce and unmitigated defire of dominion, from his being by his perfon difqualified for the fofter engagements of fociety.

GLOUCESTER,

Well, fay there is no kingdom then for Richard;

What other pleasure can the world afford?

I'll make my heaven on a lady's lap;