y reason for believing that the play was posterior
to the ballad, rather than the ballad to the play, is, that the ballad
has nothing of Shakespeare's nocturnal tempest, which is too striking to
have been omitted, and that it follows the chronicle; it has the
rudiments of the play, but none of its amplifications: it first hinted
Lear's madness, but did not array it in circumstances. The writer of the
ballad added something to the history, which is a proof that he would
have added more, if more had occurred to his mind, and more must have
occurred if he had seen Shakespeare.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

This play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The
scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the
catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action
carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to
popular opinions, as tragedy requires.

Here is one of the few attempts of Shakespeare to exhibit the
conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of
juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily
reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that "he was
obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been
killed by him." Yet he thinks him "no such formidable person, but that
he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed," without
danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth,
that, in a pointed sentence, more regard is commonly had to the words
than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously
understood. Mercutio's wit, gaiety and courage, will always procure him
friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated,
he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play;
nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his
existence, though some of his sallies are, perhaps, out of the reach of
Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to
humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive and sublime.

The nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted; he
has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious
and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest.

His comick scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetick strains are
always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however
distressed, have a conceit left them in t