But that his Works, whatever might be their reception upon the stage, made but little impression upon the ruling Intellects of the time, may be inferred from the fact that Lord Bacon, in his multifarious writings, nowhere either quotes or alludes to him.[5] His dramatic excellence enabled him to resume possession of the stage after the Restoration; but Dryden tells us that in his time two of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted for one of Shakespeare’s.  And so faint and limited was the perception of the poetic beauties of his dramas in the time of Pope, that, in his Edition of the Plays, with a view of rendering to the general reader a necessary service, he printed between inverted commas those passages which he thought most worthy of notice.

At this day, the French Critics have abated nothing of their aversion to this darling of our Nation:  ’the English, with their bouffon de Shakespeare,’ is as familiar an expression among them as in the time of Voltaire.  Baron Grimm is the only French writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the French Theatre; an advantage which the Parisian Critic owed to his German blood and German education.  The most enlightened Italians, though well acquainted with our language, are wholly incompetent to measure the proportions of Shakespeare.  The Germans only, of foreign nations, are approaching towards a knowledge and feeling of what he is.  In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the fellow countrymen of the Poet:  for among us it is a current, I might say, an established opinion, that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is pronounced to be ’a wild irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties.’  How long may it he before this misconception passes away, and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judgement of Shakespeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, constitute a unity of their own, and contribute all to one great end, is not less admirable than his imagination, his invention, and his intuitive knowledge of human Nature?

There is extant a small Volume of miscellaneous poems, in which Shakespeare expresses his own feelings in his own person.  It is not difficult to conceive that the Editor, George Steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that Volume, the Sonnets; though in no part of the writings of this Poet is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed.  But, from regard to the Critic’s own credit, he would not have ventured to talk of an[6] act of parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of those little pieces, if he had not known that the people of England were ignorant of the treasures contained in them:  and if he had not, moreover, shared the too common propensity of human nature to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, as an inmate of the celestial regions—­’there sitting where he durst not soar.’