h great appearance of toil and study, what is written
at last with little felicity; but, in his comick scenes, he seems to
produce, without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is
always struggling after some occasion to be comick; but in comedy he
seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to
his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but
his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by
the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy, for the greater part, by
incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be
instinct[8].

The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the
changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his
personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little
modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are
communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and,
therefore, durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits
are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet
soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but
the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they
pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits
them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved
by the chance that combined them; but the uniform simplicity of
primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand
heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always
continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing
the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes, without injury, by the
adamant of Shakespeare[9].

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a style which
never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and
congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language, as
to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in
the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be
understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching
modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of
speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for
distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a
conversation above grossness and below refinement, where pr