reconcile the contrarieties of
taste of different ages and nations, and to pay due homage to all
genuine poetry and art. Between good and bad, it is true, no
reconciliation is possible.]

[Footnote 13: This difficulty extends also to France; for it must not
be supposed that a literal translation can ever be a faithful one.
Mrs. Montague has done enough to prove how wretchedly even Voltaire,
in his rhymeless Alexandrines, has translated a few passages from
_Hamlet_ and the first act of _Julius Caesar_.]

[Footnote 14: It begins with the words: _A mind reflecting ages past_,
and is subscribed I.M.S.]

[Footnote 15: Lessing was the first to speak of Shakespeare in a
becoming tone; but he said, unfortunately, a great deal too little of
him, as in the time when he wrote the _Dramaturgie_ this poet had not
yet appeared on our stage. Since that time he has been more
particularly noticed by Herder in the _Blaetter von deutscher Art und
Kunst_; Goethe, in _Wilhelm Meister_; and Tieck, in "Letters on
Shakespeare" (_Poetisches Journal_, 1800), which break off, however,
almost at the commencement.]

[Footnote 16: The English work with which foreigners of every country
are perhaps best acquainted is Hume's _History_; and there we have a
most unjustifiable account both of Shakespeare and his age. "Born in a
_rude age_, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction
either _from the world_ or from books." How could a man of Hume's
acuteness suppose for a moment that a poet, whose characters display
such an intimate acquaintance with life, who, as an actor and manager
of a theatre, must have come in contact with all descriptions of
individuals, had no instruction from the world? But this is not the
worst; he goes even so far as to say, "a reasonable propriety of
thought he cannot for any time uphold." This is nearly as offensive as
Voltaire's "drunken savage."--TRANS.]

[Footnote 17: In my lectures on _The Spirit of the Age_.]

[Footnote 18: In one of his sonnets he says:

O, for my sake do you with fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
_Than public means which public manners breeds_.

And in the following:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
which _vulgar scandal_ stamp'd upon my brow.]

[Footnote 19:

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!]

[Footnote 20: This is perhap