THE POEMS OP sHAkspEARi:. 449 



tators, satisfied with what catches the eye, and incapable of even desiring 

 an analysis of those philosophic perfections, which raise Shakspeare's 

 poetry above any dependance on representation, have so long regarded 

 him as exclusively a dramatist, that they have lost all conception of his 

 other merits. 



But there is no evil without its accompanying good. If these Poems 

 have been comparatively unread, they have been also comparatively 

 uncriticised ; and this, as the world is constituted, particularly since it 

 grew Chrestomathian, is no slender advantage. The enthusiastic 

 pilgrim, who would approach in the desire of raising to their due estima- 

 tion these prostrate miracles of talent, will have no previous rubbish to 

 remove no digested nuisance of irreverent predecessors to disgust him 

 with his task no mechanical defilers to encounter, who love to leave 

 against every pillar of antiquity the Oriental proof of their critical 

 manhood. Here is one spot of Shakspeare's glory, on which he can 

 ponder without an interrupting sound ; or if the holy silence be infringed, 

 it is by Coleridge, who comments on our favourite, as Cayster on its 

 swans, by wafting his melody and reflecting his form. Nor can we much 

 less congratulate our fortune, that this part of his works, at least, has 

 escaped the Aristarchs of former ages. It was a good allegory of the 

 wit, who compared Shakspeare's rents by his critics, to Actseon devoured 

 by his dogs ; but it was not sufficiently expressive. The human soul is 

 more akin to the canine spirit, than is Shakspeare to the pack of his 

 commentators. Had not a German brain conceived the almost blas- 

 phemous idea, that Homer is a body corporate, we might safely assert, 

 that Shakspeare has been worse treated by his critics, than any other son 

 of genius. But it is not merely from tbe pedants and fribbles of 

 literature the Bentleys and the Theobalds that this great man has 

 suffered wrong ; the apologies, and the censures of great critics, and of 

 great poets, have entered into conspiracy against him. Pope applies for 

 a rule to show cause, why Shakspeare should be exempted from Aristotle's 

 code, on a plea that contains an unnecessary and degrading falsehood, 

 " that he wrote to the people" i. e. to the upper gallery, or at highest 

 the pit '* and that, at first, without patronage from the better sort, or 

 aim of pleasing them." He then varies the words, but not the sense of 

 his assertion, by saying, " that he formed himself on the judgment of 

 the players ;" quite forgetting Ben Jonson (something more than a 

 player) and Southampton (the favourite's friend), to whom, by Shaks- 

 peare's express declaration, " the first heir of his invention" is dedicated ; 

 quite forgetting 



" Those flights upon the banks of Thames 

 Which so did take Eliza and our James/' 



We would not have our readers charge us with the literary Toryism of 

 making " Eliza," or " our James," the defenders of our poetical faith, or 

 with the irrationality of preferring the critical acumen of kings to their 

 subjects (of George the Fourth, for instance, to Southey the First) ; but 

 we merely wished to show the ground of Pope's argument to be as false 

 as the structure. Dr. Johnson, though by some fine remarks, and by 

 his glorious demolition of the unities, he may be supposed to have 

 acquired some right to be wrong, has yet stretched his gigantic privilege 



