ey supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of Plutarch's lives
into plays, when they had been translated by North.

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with
incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught
than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the
marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his mind
more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other
writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us
anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in securing
the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable
curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.

The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same original.
As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but
returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our
author's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or processions
than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some visible and
discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He knew how he should
most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or
whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our
stage something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation is
very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.

Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our author's extravagancies are
endured by a nation which has seen the tragedy of _Cato_. Let him be
answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare, of
men. We find in _Cato_ innumerable beauties which enamour us of its
author, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or
human actions; we place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which
judgment propagates by conjunction with learning; but _Othello_ is the
vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius.
_Cato_ affords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners,
and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated, and
harmonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart;
the composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of
_Cato_, but we think on _Addison_.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and
diligently planted, varied wi