and of an open free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopp’d.  His wit was in his own power:  would the rule of it had been so.  Many times he fell into those things which could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, “Caesar thou dost me wrong.”

He replied, “Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause;”

’And such like, which were ridiculous; but he redeemed his vices with his virtues; there was ever more in them to be praised, than to be pardoned.’  Ben in his conversation with Mr. Drumond of Hawthornden, said, that Shakespear wanted art, and sometimes sense.  The truth is, Ben was himself a better critic than poet, and though he was ready at discovering the faults of Shakespear, yet he was not master of such a genius, as to rise to his excellencies; and great as Johnson was, he appears not a little tinctured with envy.  Notwithstanding the defects of Shakespear, he is justly elevated above all other dramatic writers.  If ever any author deserved the name of original (says Pope) it was he:  [1] ’His poetry was inspiration indeed; he is not so much an imitator, as instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say of him that he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him.  His characters are so much nature herself, that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her.  The power over our passions was likewise never possessed in so eminent a degree, or displayed in so many different instances, nor was he more a matter of the great, than of the ridiculous in human nature, nor only excelled in the passions, since he was full as admirable in the coolness of reflection and reasoning:  His sentiments are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every subject, but by a talent very peculiar, something between penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular point, on which the bent of each argument, or the force of each motive depends.’

Our author’s plays are to be distinguished only into Comedies and Tragedies.  Those which are called Histories, and even some of his Comedies, are really Tragedies, with a mixture of Comedy amongst them.  That way of Tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem better pleased with it than an exact Tragedy.  There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comic humours, and a pleasing and well distinguished variety in those characters he thought fit to exhibit with.  His images are indeed every where so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it; of which this instance is astonishing:  it is an image of patience.  Speaking of a maid in love, he says,