risms being such in kind and extent as they probably have very little supposed. But as our Author reminds us, that " Good Wine needs no Bush," I shall no longer detain the Reader from these rich and salutary Fruits of this Shakesperian Vintage: which, while they animate and quicken the Intellect, will delight, without intoxicating, the Senses; gladden and meliorate the Heart. CAPEL LOFFT. Troston Hall, near Bury, Suffolk; 14th May, 1808. IF good Sense, and moral Wisdom, and a vivid perception of the relative Duties and Affections of Life be the essential element of all good Dramatic Writing, I should be strongly dispos'd to say that none ever exceeded Shakespeare in this: And to apply to him, with the change of Socrates to Shakespeare, the words of Horace *. Good Sense and moral Wisdom are the Source The grace of Truth, and make it breathe and live. Scribendi recte sapere est et Principium et Fons. Partes in Bellum missi Ducis, ille profecto Reddere Persona scit convenientia cuique. HOR. ADDENDA. The Critical Reviewers, in giving an account of Mr. Octavius Gilchrist's Examination of the Charges main, tained by Messrs. Malone, Chalmers, and others, of Ben Jonson's Enmity, &c. towards Shakespeare, (which I did not see till long after the previous part of this Introduction was written and printed) thus express themselves: "Though Shakespeare and Jonson were contemporaries, yet they were not rivals; they had both merit, and though that of Shakespeare was transcendant, yet it differed not only in degree but in kind from that of Jonson. Shakespeare was too great to be envied*: and Jonson appears to have had none of that malicious venom in his composition. We seldom cordially praise, when dead, the individual towards whom we have been clandestinely hostile and secretly bitter when alive. But the praises which Jonson showered on the urn of Shakespeare, were evi It is, perhaps, clearer and more just to say, Jonson was too great to envy. No Excellence on Earth exalts above Envy; which is not Emulation of attainable perfection, but Hatred of that Excellence which the Envier despairs of attaining. dently not the effect of constraint but choice; they do not betray the marks of affected regard and concealed dislike; they are not the cant of hypocritical encomium, but the genuine unvitiated tribute of the heart. The lines which Jonson inserted under the portrait of Shakespeare, and those which he dedicated to his memory, bear evident marks of his veneration for the poet, and of his personal esteem for the man. Mr. Farmer justly says that Ben's verses on him who wrote for all time are 'the warmest panegyrick that ever was written,' We shall quote the inscription under the picture, and afterwards the verses addressed to his memory, in which, though he notices his defect of classical erudition, yet this is not said to diminish but to exalt his fame; for he places the productions. of his genius above all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth.' And passes on his genius this deserved sublimity of eulogy, that He was not of an age; BUT FOR ALL TIME;' addressing him in terms which envy may hypocritically employ towards the living, but which when hypocrisy is no longer necessary, it seldom uses to the dead : WRITTEN UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE: · This figure that thou here seest put To the Memory of B. J. MY BELOVED, THE AUTHOR, MR, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE*, And what he hath left Us. To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much; In the 2d Ed. 1032. |