is attempt, and clamour, as at the
diminution of the honour of that nation, which boasts itself the parent
of so great a poet.

That no such enemies may arise against me, though I am unwilling to
believe it, I am far from being too confident, for who can fix bounds to
bigotry and folly? My sex, my age, have not given me many opportunities
of mingling in the world. There may be in it many a species of absurdity
which I have never seen, and, among them, such vanity as pleases itself
with false praise bestowed on another, and such superstition as worships
idols, without supposing them to be gods.

But the truth is, that a very small part of the reputation of this
mighty genius depends upon the naked plot or story of his plays. He
lived in an age, when the books of chivalry were yet popular, and when,
therefore, the minds of his auditors were not accustomed to balance
probabilities, or to examine nicely the proportion between causes and
effects. It was sufficient to recommend a story, that it was far removed
from common life, that its changes were frequent, and its close
pathetick.

This disposition of the age concurred so happily with the imagination of
Shakespeare, that he had no desire to reform it; and, indeed, to this he
was indebted for the licentious variety, by which he made his plays more
entertaining than those of any other author.

He had looked, with great attention, on the scenes of nature; but his
chief skill was in human actions, passions, and habits; he was,
therefore, delighted with such tales as afforded numerous incidents, and
exhibited many characters in many changes of situation. These characters
are so copiously diversified, and some of them so justly pursued, that
his works may be considered, as a map of life, a faithful miniature of
human transactions; and he that has read Shakespeare, with attention,
will, perhaps, find little new in the crowded world.

Among his other excellencies, it ought to be remarked, because it has
hitherto been unnoticed, that his heroes are men; that the love and
hatred, the hopes and fears of his chief personages, are such as are
common to other human beings, and not, like those which later times have
exhibited, peculiar to phantoms that strut upon the stage[1].

It is not, perhaps, very necessary to inquire whether the vehicle of so
much delight and instruction, be a story probable or unlikely, native or
foreign. Shakespeare's excellence is not the fiction of a tale