.

No critic had questioned Shakespeare's truth to nature. The flower of
Pope's Preface is the section on his knowledge of the world and his power
over the passions. Lyttleton showed his intimacy with Pope's opinion when
in his _Dialogues of the Dead_ he made him say: "No author had ever so
copious, so bold, so _creative_ an imagination, with so perfect a
knowledge of the passions, the humours and sentiments of mankind. He
painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and
equal force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of
it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those
writings." The same eulogy is repeated in other words by Johnson. And in
Gray's _Progress of Poesy_ Shakespeare is "Nature's Darling." It was his
diction which gave most scope to the censure of the better critics. An age
whose literary watchwords were simplicity and precision was bound to
remark on his obscurities and plays on words, and even, as Dryden had
done, on his bombast. What Shaftesbury(27) or Atterbury(28) had said at
the beginning of the century is repeated, as we should expect, by the
rhetoricians, such as Blair. But it was shown by Kames that the merit of
Shakespeare's language lay in the absence of those abstract and general
terms which were the blemish of the century's own diction. "Shakespeare's
style in that respect," says Kames, "is excellent: every article in his
descriptions is particular, as in nature." And herein Kames gave
independent expression to the views of the poet who is said to have lived
in the wrong century. "In truth," said Gray, "Shakespeare's language is
one of his principal beauties; and he has no less advantage over your
Addisons and Rowes in this than in those other great excellences you
mention. Every word in him is a picture."(29)

The first book devoted directly to the examination of Shakespeare's
characters was by William Richardson, Professor of Humanity in the
University of Glasgow. His _Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of
some of Shakespeare's remarkable Characters_, which dealt with Macbeth,
Hamlet, Jaques, and Imogen, appeared in 1774; ten years later he added a
second series on Richard III., King Lear, and Timon of Athens; and in 1789
he concluded his character studies with his essay on Falstaff. As the
titles show, Richardson's work has a moral purpose. His intention, as he
tells us, was to make poetry subservient to philosophy, and