are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the
world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons
act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles
by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is
continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too
often an individual: in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is
derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical
axioms and domestick wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse
was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works
may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. Yet his real
power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the
progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries
to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in
Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in
his pocket as a specimen.

It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in
accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with
other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation,
that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student
disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he
should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to
every stage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any
other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen,
conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will
never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author
is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and
is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to
claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned, by diligent
selection, out of common conversation and common occurrences.

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all
good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To
bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in
contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest,
and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other;
to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their m