offended, was the chief recommendation of writings to
unskilful curiosity.

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is
reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read
by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed
him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread
of the story in their hands.

The stories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were, in his
time, accessible and familiar. The fable of As You Like It, which is
supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of
those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain
English prose, which the criticks have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English histories he took from English chronicles and English
ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by
versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of
Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by North.

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with
incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily
caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the
marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his
mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any
other writer: others please us by particular speeches; but he always
makes us anxious for the event, and has, perhaps, excelled all but Homer
in securing the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and
unquenchable curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read
it through.

The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same original.
As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but
returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our
author's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or processions
than in poetical language, and, perhaps, wanted some visible and
discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He knew how he should
most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or
whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our
stage something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation
is very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.

Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our author's extravagancies are
endured by a nation, which ha