entrap a docile and easy reader into an unhappy _misrecollection_ of his
own true and clear knowledge upon the matter. Thirdly, we were not sorry
to find ourselves engaged in clearing up, once for all, our own hitherto
somewhat confused and insecure impressions. In the fourth place, we do
always rejoice, and are irresistibly swayed from our equipoise, and are
liable to be hurried any lengths, when we fall in with any opportunity of
talking in any way about Shakspeare. But in particular we are glad to be
obliged to approve and authenticate any general and grounding views of his
poetry; and it came not amiss to our humour, in this day of the world, to
show how tenderly and reverently the Spirit, who has the most lovingly,
largely, and profoundly comprehended humanity, viewed the mistrusted and
assailed institutions which have all along built and sustained the
societies of men. If there is "beauty" that "maketh beautiful old rhyme,"
there is verse that reacts upon its matter; the poetry of Shakspeare shall
stand in the place of a more easily fallible political science, to
strengthen, whilst it adorns, the old pillars of man's world. Song can
draw down the moon from the sky--song shall draw and charm many a rugged,
uncouth, untamed understanding to a more submissive political docility.

But, indeed, there lurked one other less ambitious motive. What could the
accurate Pope mean by this most inaccurate description of his author? We
presume that there is an answer. The eulogy which precisely describes
Shakspeare, is Pope's own. The imputations against Shakspeare, of which
Pope will palliate the edge, are not Pope's. They are the impeachments
laid by the adversary, which Pope, zealous of mitigating, too largely and
hastily concedes. Standing, then, in bare and sharp opposition, as they
do, to the fact, they may serve us as constituting a fact in themselves.
They attest the opinion of the day--opinion, at least, prevalent high and
wide, since Pope allows it. We can understand the opinion itself only as a
confused and excessive exaggeration of the admixture which Shakspeare
allowed to the lower comic, in comedy and in tragedy; as a protest--in
which how far did Pope join?--against that admixture. The conclusion which
this day will draw, must be, that the criticism of Shakspeare in polite
circles, at that day, stood low.

"Another cause (and no less strong than the former) may be deduced
from our author's being a _playe