be true to nature; yet it were equally averfe to the feelings of the author, and to the dignity of his paper, to make them the portraits of individuals.

The verses of Delia are written with ease and spirit; there is but one objection to their being inferted, their very high praife of the Lounger, which, though it were ingratitude in him not to acknowledge, it might be deemed vanity to publish.

V.

N° 68. SATURDAY, May 20. 1786.

HAT" Poet and Creator are the fame,"

THA

is equally allowed in Criticism as in Etymology; and that, without the powers of invention and imagination, nothing great or highly delightful in Poetry can be atchieved.

I have often thought that the fame thing holds in fome measure with regard to the reader as well as the writer of poetry. Without fomewhat of a congenial imagination in the former, the works of the latter will afford a very inferior degree of pleasure. The mind of him who reads, fhould be able to imagine what the productive fancy of the Poet creates and presents to his view; to look on the world of fancy fet before him with a native's eye, and to hear its language with a native's ear; to acknowledge its manners, to feel its paffions, and to trace, with fomewhat of an inftinctive glance, thofe characters with which the Poet has peopled it.

If in the perufal of any poet this is required, Shakespeare, of all poets, feems to claim it the moft. Of

Of all poets, Shakespeare appears to have poffeffed a fancy the most prolific, an imagination the moft luxuriantly fertile. In this particular he has been frequently compared to Homer, though those who have drawn the parallel, have done it, I know not why, with a fort, of diftrust of their affertion. Did we not look at the Greek with that reverential awe which his antiquity impreffes, I think we might venture to affirm, that in this respect the other is more than his equal. In invention of incident, in diverfity of character, in affemblage of images, we can fcarcely indeed conceive Homer to be furpaffed; but in the mere creation of fancy, I can discover nothing in the Iliad that equals the Tempest or the Macbeth of Shakespeare. The machinery of Homer is indeed stupendous; but of that machinery the materials were known; or, though it fhould be allowed that he added something to the mythology he found, yet ftill the language and the manners of his deities are merely the language and the manners of men. Of Shakespeare, the machito be produced as well as combined by himself. Some of the beings of whom it is compofed, neither tradition nor romance afforded him; and of thofe whom he borrowed thence, he invented the language and the manners; language and manners peculiar to them

nery may be faid

felves,

2

felves, for which he could draw no analogy from mankind. Though formed by fancy, however, his perfonages are true to nature, and a reader of that pregnant imagination which I have mentioned above, can immediately decide on the justnefs of his conceptions; as he who beholds the masterly expreflion of certain portraits, pronounces with confidence on their likenefs, though unacquainted with the perfons from whom they, were drawn.

I

But it is not only in thofe untried regions of magic or of witchery that the creative power of Shakespeare has exerted itself. By a very fingular felicity of invention, he has produced in the beaten field of ordinary life, characters of fuch. perfect originality, that we look on them with no ɔ lefs wonder at his invention, than on thofe pré-ternatural beings, which are not of this earth ;": and yet they speak, a language fo purely that of common fociety, that we have but to ftep abroad into the world to hear every expreflion of which it is compofed. Of this fort is the character of Falstaff to not sắt

On the fubject of this character I was lately difcourfing with a friend, who is very much endowed with that critical imagination of which I have fuggefted the ufe in the beginning of this paper. The general import of his obfervations may form ̧ VOL. II. D d neither

neither an useless nor unamufing field for fpeculation to my readers.

Though the character of Falftaff, faid my friend, is of fo ftriking a kind as to ingrofs almoft. the whole attention of the audience, in the reprefentation of the play in which it is first introduced; yet it was probably only a fecondary and incidental object with Shakespeare in compofing that play. He was writing a series of historical dramas, on the most remarkable events of the English history, from the time of King John downwards. When he arrived at the reign of Henry IV. the diffipated youth and extravagant pranks of the Prince of Wales could not fail to excite his attention, as affording at once a fource of moral reflection in the serious department, and a fund of infinite humour in the comic part of the drama. In providing him with affociates for his hours of folly and of riot, he probably borrowed, as was his cuftom, from fome old play, interlude, or story, the names and incidents which he has used in the first part of Henry IV. Oldcaftle, we know, was the name of a character in fuch a play, inferted there, it is probable, (in thofe days of the Church's omnipotence in every department of writing), in odium of Sir John Oldcastle, chief of the Lollards, though Shakefpeare afterwards, in a Protestant reign, changed