Steele is an injustice to his contemporaries. In the year that
the _Tatler_ was begun, Rowe brought out his edition of the "best of our
poets"; and a reissue was called for five years later. It is said by
Johnson(2) that Pope's edition drew the public attention to Shakespeare's
works, which, though often mentioned, had been little read. Henceforward
there was certainly an increase in the number of critical investigations,
but if Shakespeare had been little read, how are we to explain the
coffee-house discussions of which we seem to catch echoes in the
periodical literature? The allusions in the _Spectator_, or the essays in
the _Censor_, must have been addressed to a public which knew him. Dennis,
who "read him over and over and still remained unsatiated," tells how he
was accused, by blind admirers of the poet, of lack of veneration, because
he had ventured to criticise, and how he had appealed from a private
discussion to the judgment of the public. "Above all I am pleased," says
the _Guardian_, "in observing that the Tragedies of Shakespeare, which in
my youthful days have so frequently filled my eyes with tears, hold their
rank still, and are the great support of our theatre."(3) Theobald could
say that "this author is grown so universal a book that there are very few
studies or collections of books, though small, amongst which it does not
hold a place"; and he could add that "there is scarce a poet that our
English tongue boasts of who is more the subject of the Ladies'
reading."(4) It would be difficult to explain away these statements. The
critical interest in Shakespeare occasioned by Pope's edition may have
increased the knowledge of him, but he had been regularly cited, long
before Pope's day, as England's representative genius. To argue that he
had ever been out of favour we must rely on later statements, and they are
presumably less trustworthy than those which are contemporary. Lyttelton
remarked that a veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of the
national religion, and the only part in which even men of sense are
fanatics;(5) and Gibbon spoke of the "idolatry for the gigantic genius of
Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an
Englishman."(6) The present volume will show how the eighteenth century
could almost lose itself in panegyric of Shakespeare. The evidence is so
overwhelming that it is hard to understand how the century's respect for
Shakespeare was ever doubted.