e is not to be
judged according to the rules. "Our critics do not seem sensible," he
writes, "that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is
ignorant of the rules of art than in those of a little genius who knows
and observes them. Our inimitable Shakespeare is a stumbling-block to the
whole tribe of these rigid critics. Who would not rather read one of his
plays where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any
production of a modern critic where there is not one of them
violated?"(12) The rigid critics continued to find fault with the
structure of Shakespeare's plays. In the articles in the _Adventurer_ on
the _Tempest_ and _King Lear_, Joseph Warton repeats the standard
objection to tragi-comedy and underplots. In the _Biographia Britannica_
we still find it stated that Shakespeare set himself to please the
populace, and that the people "had no notion of the rules of writing, or
the model of the Ancients." But one whose tastes were classical, both by
nature and by training, had been thinking out the matter for himself. It
was only after long reflection, and with much hesitation, that Johnson had
disavowed what had almost come to be considered the very substance of the
classical faith. In his _Irene_ he had bowed to the rules; he had,
however, begun to suspect them by the time he wrote the _Rambler_, and in
the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare suspicion has become conviction.
His sturdy common sense and independence of judgment led him to anticipate
much of what has been supposed to be the discovery of the romantic school.
His Preface has received scant justice. There is no more convincing
criticism of the neo-classical doctrines.(13)

Henceforward we hear less about the rules. Johnson had performed a great
service for that class of critics whose deference to learned opinion kept
them from saying fully what they felt. The lesser men had not been at
their ease when they referred to Shakespeare. We see their difficulty in
the Latin lectures of Joseph Trapp, the first Professor of Poetry at
Oxford, as well as in the Grub Street _Essay upon English Tragedy_ (1747)
by William Guthrie. They admire his genius, but they persist in regretting
that his plays are not properly constructed. Little importance attaches to
Mrs. Montagu's _Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare_
(1769).(14) It was only a well-meaning but shallow reply to Voltaire,(15)
and a reply was unnecessary. Johnson ha