And then the Lover
    Sighing like Furnace, with a woful Ballad
    Made to his Mistress’ Eye-brow.  Then a Soldier
    Full of strange Oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
    Jealous in Honour, sudden and quick in Quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble Reputation
    Ev’n in the Cannon’s Mouth.  And then the Justice
    In fair round Belly, with good Capon lin’d,
    With Eyes severe, and Beard of formal Cut,
    Full of wise Saws and modern Instances;
    And so he plays his Part.  The sixth Age shifts
    Into the lean and slipper’d Pantaloon,
    With Spectacles on Nose, and Pouch on Side;
    His youthful Hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
    For his shrunk Shank; and his big manly Voice
    Turning again tow’rd childish treble Pipes,
    And Whistles in his Sound.  Last Scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful History,
    Is second Childishness and meer Oblivion,
    Sans Teeth, sans Eyes, sans Tast, sans ev’rything._

    p. 625.

His Images are indeed ev’ry where so lively, that the Thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess ev’ry Part of it.  I will venture to point out one more, which is, I think, as strong and as uncommon as any thing I ever saw; ’tis an Image of Patience.  Speaking of a Maid in Love, he says,

      _—­She never told her Love,
    But let Concealment, like a Worm i’ th’ Bud
    Feed on her Damask Cheek:  She pin’d in Thought,
    And sate like Patience on a Monument,
    Smiling at_ Grief.

What an Image is here given! and what a Task would it have been for the greatest Masters of Greece and Rome to have express’d the Passions design’d by this Sketch of Statuary?  The Stile of his Comedy is, in general, Natural to the Characters, and easie in it self; and the Wit most commonly sprightly and pleasing, except in those places where he runs into Dogrel Rhymes, as in The Comedy of Errors, and a Passage or two in some other Plays.  As for his Jingling sometimes, and playing upon Words, it was the common Vice of the Age he liv’d in:  And if we find it in the Pulpit, made use of as an Ornament to the Sermons of some of the Gravest Divines of those Times; perhaps it may not be thought too light for the Stage.

But certainly the greatness of this Author’s Genius do’s no where so much appear, as where he gives his Imagination an entire Loose, and raises his Fancy to a flight above Mankind and the Limits of the visible World.  Such are his Attempts in The Tempest, Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet.  Of these, The Tempest, however it comes to be plac’d the first by the former Publishers of his Works, can never have been the first written by him:  It seems to me as perfect in its Kind, as almost any thing we have of his.  One may observe, that the Unities are kept here with an Exactness uncommon to the Liberties