The patricians were the few in conspiracy against the many. And the struggles of the people were an honeft ftruggle for that share of power, which was kept unjustly from them. No wonder the hiftorians have reprefented the tribunes factious, and the people rebellious, when most of that fort now remaining wrote after the fubversion of their conftitution, and under the fear or favour of the Caefars. One would think our poet had been bred in the court of Nero, when we fee in what colours he paints the tribunes, or the people he feems to have no other idea of them, than as a mob of Wat Tylers and Jack Cades. Hence he has fpoiled, one of the fineft fubjects of tragedy from the Roman hiftory, his Coriolanus. But if this be the fault of Shakespeare, 'twas no lefs the fault of Virgil and Horace; he errs in good company. Yet this is a poor apology, for the poet ought never to fubmit his art to wrong opinions, and prevailing fashion. . AND now I am confidering the faulty fide of our poet, I cannot pass over his ever and anon confounding the manners of the age which he is defcribing, with those in which he lived for if these are at all introduced, it should be done with great art and delicacy; and with such an : antique antique caft, as Virgil has given to his Roman customs and manners. Much lefs can many of his anacronisms be defended. Other kind of errors (if they may be fo called) are properly the errors of great genius's; fuch are inaccuracies of language, and a faulty fublime, which is furely preferable to a faultless mediocrity. Shakefpeare labouring with a multiplicity of fublime ideas often gives himself not time to be delivered of them by the rules of flow-endeavouring art: hence he crowds various figures together, and metaphor upon metaphor; and runs the hazard of far-fetched expreffions, whilst intent on nobler ideas he condefcends not to grammatical niceties: here the audience are to accompany the poet in his conceptions, and to supply what he has sketched out for them. I will mention an instance or two of this fort. Hamlet is speaking to his father's ghost, Ob! anfwer me, Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canoniz'd bones, bearfed in death, 5 Such expreffions, Longinus fect. 32. calls prettily enough, (after better critics than himself) wagaxırdureuls κώτερα. Again, Macbeth in a foliloquy before he murders Duncan, Befides, this Duncan Hath born his faculties fo meek, bath been Many other paffages of this kind might be mention'd, which pafs off tolerably well in the mouth of the actor, while the imagination of the spectator helps and fupplies every seeming inaccuracy; but they will no more bear a close view, than fome defignedly unfinished, and rough sketches of a masterly hand. H BOOK II. SECT. I. AVING spoken of the poet's province, I return to the subject of critics and criticism; and fhall confider not what they have been, but what their affumed character requires them to be. If a critic, as the original word imports, can truly judge of authors, he must have formed his judgment from the perfectest models. I Horace fends 1 Hor. art. poet. . 323. and 268. Horace does not feem to have any great opinion of his countrymen, as to their learned capacity. Plautus and Terence are copies of the Grecian stage; the latter, Caefar called, dimidiate Menander. If their tragic poets were no better than Seneca, their lofs is not greatly to be regretted. It might not be difpleafing to the reader to know Virgil's opinion; and he might be pretty certain 'twas the fame as Horace's, had not he left us his teftimony, which is as follows, even where he is celebrating the Roman worthies: Aen. VI, 842. Excudent alii fpirantia mollius aera, Credo equidem, et vivos ducent de marmore vultus, 'Tis truly observed by Mr. Ascham in his Scholemaster, P. 55. That Athens within the memory of one man's life bred greater men, than Rome in the compass of those feven hundred years when it flourished most. you you to Grecian writers to gain a right relish of literature. "Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo "Mufa loqui. "Vos exemplaria Graeca "Nocturna verfate manu, verfate diurna. When a taste and relish is well modeled and formed, and our general science of what is fair and good improved; 'tis no very difficult matter to apply this knowledge to particulars. But if I have no ftandard of right and wrong, no criterion of foul and fair; if I cannot give a reason for my liking or disliking, how much more becoming is modefty and filence? I would beg leave to know, what ideas can he be supposed to have of a real sublime in manners and fentiments, who has never gone further for his inftruction, than what a puffy rhetorician, who wrote in a barbarous age, can teach? Or what admirer of monkish fophifts and cafuifts, can ever have any relish at all? The human mind naturally and neceffarily perfues truth, it's fecond felf; and, if not rightly fet to work, will foon fix on some false appearance and borrowed representations of what is fair and good: here it will endeavour to ac |