h or profundity in their
remarks; and these critics seem to me to be but stammering
interpreters of the general and almost idolatrous admiration of his
countrymen. There may be people in England who entertain the same
views of them with myself, at least it is a well-known fact that a
satirical poet has represented Shakespeare, under the hands of his
commentators, by Actaeon worried to death by his own dogs; and,
following up the story of Ovid, designated a female writer on the
great poet as the snarling Lycisca.

We shall endeavor, in the first place, to remove some of these false
views, in order to clear the way for our own homage, that we may
thereupon offer it the more freely without let or hindrance.

From all the accounts of Shakespeare which have come down to us it is
clear that his contemporaries knew well the treasure they possessed in
him, and that they felt and understood him better than most of those
who succeeded him. In those days a work was generally ushered into the
world with Commendatory Verses; and one of these, prefixed to an early
edition of Shakespeare, by an unknown author, contains some of the
most beautiful and happy lines that were ever applied to any poet.[14]
An idea, however, soon became prevalent that Shakespeare was a rude
and wild genius, who poured forth at random, and without aim or
object, his unconnected compositions. Ben Jonson, a younger
contemporary and rival of Shakespeare, who labored in the sweat of his
brow, but with no great success, to expel the romantic drama from the
English stage and to form it on the model of the ancients, gave it as
his opinion that Shakespeare did not blot enough, and that, as he did
not possess much school-learning, he owed more to nature than to art.
The learned, and sometimes rather pedantic Milton was also of this
opinion, when he says--

Our sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild.

Yet it is highly honorable to Milton that the sweetness of
Shakespeare, the quality which of all others has been least allowed,
was felt and acknowledged by him. The modern editors, both in their
prefaces, which may be considered as so many rhetorical exercises in
praise of the poet, and in their remarks on separate passages, go
still farther. Judging them by principles which are not applicable to
them, not only do they admit the irregularity of his pieces, but, on
occasion, they accuse him of bombast, of a confused, ungrammatical