Critics of Shakespeare

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that honors due only to morality are paid to antiquity is a complaint promising to be always continued by those, who, be fitted to add nothing to truth, want from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointments upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard is to that extent denied by envy will be at brook bestowed by sequence.

        Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the respect of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason but from prejudice. any(prenominal) seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes cooperated with chance; all perhaps are more than willing to honor past than present excellency; and the drumhead contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sunshine through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to bewilder the faults of the moderns and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living, we rate his powers by his pommel performance; and while he is dead, we estimate him by his best.

        To kit and caboodle, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to deeds not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientific, but appealing altogether to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind expect long possessed, they have often examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it is because familiar comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favor. As among the works of nature no man can call a river deep or a mountain without the knowledge of galore(postnominal) mountains and many rivers,

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