ss, and Cicero is
ridiculous, in his hands. He appears to have written his Troilus and
Cressida partly with a view to degrade, and hold up to contempt, the
heroes of Homer; and he has even disfigured the pure, heroic affection
which the Greek poet has painted as existing between Achilles and
Patroclus with the most odious imputations.

And, as he could not sustain an heroic character throughout, so neither
could he construct a perfect plot, in which the interest should be
perpetually increasing, and the curiosity of the spectator kept alive
and in suspense to the last moment. Several of his plays have an unity
of subject to which nothing is wanting; but he has not left us any
production that should rival that boast of Ancient Greece in the conduct
of a plot, the OEdipus Tyrannus, a piece in which each act rises upon
the act before, like a tower that lifts its head story above story to
the skies. He has scarcely ever given to any of his plays a fifth act,
worthy of those that preceded; the interest generally decreases after
the third.

Shakespear is also liable to the charge of obscurity. The most sagacious
critics dispute to this very hour, whether Hamlet is or is not mad,
and whether Falstaff is a brave man or a coward. This defect is perhaps
partly to be imputed to the nature of dramatic writing. It is next to
impossible to make words, put into the mouth of a character, develop all
those things passing in his mind, which it may be desirable should be
known.

I spoke, a short time back, of the language of Shakespear in his finest
passages, as of unrivalled excellence and beauty; I might almost have
called it miraculous. O, si sic omnia! It is to be lamented that this
felicity often deserts him. He is not seldom cramp, rigid and pedantic.
What is best in him is eternal, of all ages and times; but what is
worst, is crusted with an integument, almost more cumbrous than that of
any other writer, his contemporary, the merits of whose works continue
to invite us to their perusal.

After Shakespear, it is scarcely worth while to bring forward any
other example, of a writer who, notwithstanding his undoubted claims to
excellencies of the highest order, yet in his productions fully displays
the inequality and non-universality of his genius. One of the most
remarkable instances may be alleged in Richardson, the author of
Clarissa. In his delineation of female delicacy, of high-souled
and generous sentiments, of the subtlest