little
modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are
communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and
therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits are
only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon
fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the
discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade
the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The
accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance
which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities
neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood
is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The
stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks of
other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never
becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and congenial
to the analogy and principles of its respective language, as to remain
settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common
intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without
ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations,
and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of
finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the
vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above
grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this
poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more
agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other author equally
remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be studied as one of
the original masters of our language.

These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant,
but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's familiar
dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without
ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though
it has spots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praised as natural,
though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions
improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface
is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with