be cured of
his delirious ecstacies, by reading human sentiments in human language,
by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the
world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of
criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and
Rymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his
kings as not completely royal[5]. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a
senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks
decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard.
But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and, if
he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of
distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or
kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other
city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into
the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have
afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not
only odious, but despicable; he, therefore, added drunkenness to his
other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that
wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of
petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and
condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the
drapery.

The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes,
as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the
fact be first stated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either
tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting
the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy
and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable
modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which
the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the
reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in
which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of
another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered
without design.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets,
according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the
cri