"It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express and will not reject."

"What he does best he soon ceases to do."

"A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures."

"He neglects the unities-those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and critics."

Johnson proceeds to defend Shakespeare by an excellent demonstration of the absurdity of the unities, and at the close of it owns himself "almost frighted at his own temerity." Then he follows Pope in finding Shakespeare to be hampered by the age in which he lived. "The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity." Having to appeal to immature intellects, he was compelled to base his plays on novels and traditions well known to his audience, "for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama had they not held the thread of the story in their hands." In reply to Voltaire, who expressed wonder that Shakespeare's extravagances should be endured by a nation which had seen the tragedy of Cato, Johnson says that “Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." He proceeds to deal with Shakespeare's learning, and Shakespeare emerges from the ordeal credited with rather less than the average boardschool boy of the present day. Johnson decides at length that "if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom and venera

tion"; and, finally, he sums up his merits in the following fine sentence :

"It therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions." 1

It is difficult in the face of these pros and cons to determine what Johnson's attitude towards Shakespeare really was. Much of his apparent hostility may, perhaps, be attributed to his instinctive argumentativeness. It was his nature to object. If he were in a loquacious mood, you had but to make a bald statement, and he was upon you with an aggressively persuasive "Why, sir!" And here it may be that he felt irresistibly impelled to combat the universal opinion of Shakespeare's greatness, and that he was hardly sincere in all he wrote. However this may be, it is probable that he left on his readers the impression that the balance of his inclination was against rather than for Shakespeare. The very fact of the judicial attitude would

1 Johnson several times expresses himself in a like spirit in his Rambler: "It may be doubtful whether from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected than he alone has given to his country.”—Works, v. 131.

"He that has read Shakespeare with attention will, perhaps, find little new in the crowded world."-1b. 434.

"Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation.”—Ib. 152.

tend to produce such an impression. A judicial attitude towards Shakespeare was not at that period so well understood as to be readily distinguished from unfriendliness. And in estimating the critical attitude of the age towards Shakespeare, it is necessary to bear in mind that Dr. Johnson was more important person when he lived than he is now. Nothing is gained by speculating what he might have thought. The fact remains that what he wrote carried weight.

Johnson's opinion was not, however, sufficiently weighty to make his preface, as he intended it to be, the last word in Shakespearean criticism. Other editors followed him. Edward Capell brought much serious and laborious scholarship to the task; and his judgments were frequently sound, though his lack of perspicuity in delivering them detracts somewhat from their value. His edition appeared in 1768.

Five years later, in 1773, George Steevens revised Johnson's edition, and, bringing to the enterprise an unrivalled knowledge of Elizabethan history and literature, embodied many improvements, which he treated with a humour that was frequently malicious and occasionally obscene. To the second edition (1778) of this work was added much valuable material relating to Shakespeare's biography and the sources of his plots, due to the researches of Edmund Malone, who published an edition of his own in 1790. The well-known "First Variorum" edition appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1803, prepared by Isaac Reed from a 1793 copy of Steevens', containing many manuscript notes. The "Second Variorum" appeared in 1813; and the "Third Variorum," arranged by James Boswell, the son of Johnson's biographer, which appeared in 1821, marks the

close of what may be called the eighteenth century period of commentators.

It will be seen, then, that Shakespeare was at this time kept prominently before the eyes of the reading public. He was equally a topic of interest with men of letters who confined themselves to no special branch of literature. The attitude of the eighteenth century essayists toward Shakespeare was essentially one of admiration and respect for his genius. They found fault with his plays, it is true, frequently enough, but almost always apologetically. He was not infrequently held up as a model for modern dramatists to follow. The Connoisseur, for example, printed a paper discussing the sources of the Merchant of Venice; and while elaborating the fact that the plot was borrowed, insisted on the genius displayed in the use which Shakespeare made of it. The Guardian, again, enlarges on the naturalness of Shakespeare's characters-remarkable at a time when poetry was, above all things, rhetorical and artificial.

Let us glance now at the poetical critics. It will be noticed that many of the pieces printed in the body of this book appear under names that are not very familiar, and that the eighteenth century is responsible for the majority of them. In modern anthologies it is not usual to include selections from the works of such poets; nor, indeed, if literary excellence be the compiler's object, is it expedient. They are included here not because their effusions appear to me to reach even a modest standard of merit, but because they were accepted as good poets by their contemporaries and by the literary dictator, Dr. Johnson. Johnson, it is true, disclaimed responsibility for the

choice of names represented in his edition of British poets, but the repudiation cannot be considered of much importance. Johnson's name had probably more weight with publishers than that of any other man of his time, and it is hardly likely that his advice in the matter of inclusion or rejection, had he thought it worth while to give it, would have been ignored. So one may feel certain that every name on his list appeared with his approval. The laudatory criticisms embodied in the biographies, which he asserted marked the extent of his commission, prove as much. Take Blackmore, for example, whose Creation was included, on Johnson's recommendation, in his edition of the poets. "This poem," he says, "if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English Muse." Posterity, on the whole, has not given the Muse's favourite much of a welcome, and Blackmore is one of a number of such chosen ones. But even Johnson might have known better. They had their reputations ready made for them by patrons. It was the age of patrons and extravagant compliment, and Shakespeare in the hands of these small poets took a place similar to that of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. Poetical flatterers of great men permitted him to fill the position of comparative in the scale of eulogy, the object of their praises being the superlative. Just as the writers of light society compliments made envious Venus second to Clorinda or Chloe or Celia, so Shakespeare stood aside to find himself excelled by Addison or Pope or Dryden, or even, on exceptional occasions, by some patron who scarcely did more than pretend to throw off