me of Theobald and of Pope. Let
him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and
corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his
interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased,
let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the
work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts
are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he
suspects not why; and at last throws away the book which he has too
diligently studied. Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been
surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the
comprehension of any great work in its full design and in its true
proportions; a close approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty
of the whole is discerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of editors
has added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read, admired,
studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the
improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him;
while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood;
yet then did Dryden pronounce "that Shakespeare was the man, who, of all
modern and, perhaps, ancient poets, had the largest and most
comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him,
and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any
thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those, who accuse him to
have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was
naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature;
he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where
alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the
greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit
degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is
always great when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can
say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise
himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."

It is to be lamented that such a writer should want a commentary; that
his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it
is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which
must happen t