Page images
PDF
EPUB

:

[ocr errors]

1

DAVID GARRICK, Efq.

T

HERE is no perfon whose patronage a Work of this kind may so properly claim, as Your's; Your private life having done so much honour to the moral part, and Your public one fuch justice to the principal Characters, represented in our Author's writings.

Your action has been a better comment on his Text, than all his Editors have been able to fupply. You mark his beauties; They but clear his blots. You impress us with the living spirit; They only present us the dead letter.

There is one striking similarity between Shakespeare and You, in a very uncommon particular: He is the only Dramatic Writer, who ever alike ex

[blocks in formation]

celled in Tragedy and Comedy; and we may without flattery venture to affim, That you are the only Performer who ever appeared with equal advantage, both in the Sock and Buskin. \

If I had an higher opinion of this Work than I have, I should have still but an higher inducement for addressing it to You. From this confideration You are bound to receive it, with all its imperfections on its head, being offered as a tribute of that friendship and esteem with which I have the honour to be,

[blocks in formation]

PREFACE.

:

A

MONG the many writers of our nation, who have by their talents contributed to entertain, inform, or improve our minds, no one has so happily or universally succeeded, as he whom we may justly stile our first, our greatest Poet, Shakespeare. For more than a century and a half, this Author has been the delight of the Ingenious, the text of the Moralist, and the study of the Philosopher. Even his cotemporary writers have ingenuously yielded their plaudit to his fame, as not presuming it could lessen theirs, set at so great a distance. Such superior excellence could never be brought into a comparative light; and jealousy is dumb, when competition must be vain. For him, then, they chearfully twined the laurel-wreath, and unrepining placed it on his brow; where it will ever bloom, while sense, taste, and natural feelings of the heart, shall remain amongst the characteristics of this, or any other nation, that can be able to construe his language. He is a Claffic, and cotemporary with all ages.

True Nature's Drama represents all time;
Though old the last, the first retains its prime.

A 3

But

But amidst all this burst of applause, one fingle
difcordant voice is faintly heard. Voltaire has
stood forth his opponent. One might imagine
such a writer to have had taste enough to relish
his poetical beauties, at least, tho' poffibly some
doubt might arife about his sympathy with his
moral ones.

But he unfairly tries him by Pe-
dant laws, which our Author either did not
know, or regarded not. His compofitions are
a distinct species of the Drama; and not being
an imitation of the Greek one, cannot be justly
faid to have infringed its rules. Shakespeare is
a model, not a copy; he looked into nature, not in-
to books, both for men and works. 'Tis learned
ignorance, therefore, to quote the antient ex-
emplars against him. Is there no spring inspired,
but Aganippe's font ? No raptured vifion, but
on Parnaffus' mount? The Grecian Bards them-
selves had conceived a more liberal notion, in
this particular, who, by making Phabus the
God of Poetry, feem to have acknowledged in-
spiration to be univerfal.

But as it may shew more impartiality upon
this subject, to oppose one French authority to
another, I shall here quote against M. Voltaire,
the Abbé Le Blanc's opinion of our Author, in
his Letters on the English Nation, written to his
Friend. "He is, says he, of all Writers, an-
"tient or modern, the most of an original.
"He is truly a great genius, and Nature has
" endowed him with powers to shew it. His
"imagination is rich and strong: he paints
"whatever he fees, and embellishes whatever
"he defcribes. The Loves in the train of Ve-
"nus are not represented with more grace, in

"the

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »