ith Pope, that every speech may be assigned to
the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing
characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to
every person, it will be difficult to find any that can be properly
transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The choice is
right, when there is reason for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated
characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the
writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a
dwarf; and he that should form his expectation of human affairs from the
play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no
heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the
reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same
occasion: even where the agency is super-natural, the dialogue is level
with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most
frequent incidents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will not
know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and
familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen,
but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has
assigned; and it may be said that he has not only shewn human nature as it
acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials to which it
cannot be exposed.

This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror
of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms
which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his
delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by
scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and
a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of
criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and
Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his
kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended that Menenius, a senator
of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency
violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But
Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he
preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions
superinduced and adventitious