by natural degrees to the extremity of passion, is conducted in all three, to the declination of the same passion, and concludes with a warm renewing of their friendship.  But the particular ground-work which Shakespeare has taken, is incomparably the best; because he has not only chosen two of the greatest heroes of their age, but has likewise interested the liberty of Rome, and their own honours, who were the redeemers of it, in this debate.  And if he has made Brutus, who was naturally a patient man, to fly into excess at first, let it be remembered in his defence, that, just before, he has received the news of Portia’s death; whom the poet, on purpose neglecting a little chronology, supposes to have died before Brutus, only to give him an occasion of being more easily exasperated.  Add to this, that the injury he had received from Cassius, had long been brooding in his mind; and that a melancholy man, upon consideration of an affront, especially from a friend, would be more eager in his passion, than he who had given it, though naturally more choleric.  Euripides, whom I have followed, has raised the quarrel betwixt two brothers, who were friends.  The foundation of the scene was this:  The Grecians were wind-bound at the port of Aulis, and the oracle had said, that they could not sail, unless Agamemnon delivered up his daughter to be sacrificed:  he refuses; his brother Menelaus urges the public safety; the father defends himself by arguments of natural affection, and hereupon they quarrel.  Agamemnon is at last convinced, and promises to deliver up Iphigenia, but so passionately laments his loss, that Menelaus is grieved to have been the occasion of it, and, by a return of kindness, offers to intercede for him with the Grecians, that his daughter might not be sacrificed.  But my friend Mr Rymer has so largely, and with so much judgment, described this scene, in comparing it with that of Melantius and Amintor, that it is superfluous to say more of it; I only named the heads of it, that any reasonable man might judge it was from thence I modelled my scene betwixt Troilus and Hector.  I will conclude my reflections on it, with a passage of Longinus, concerning Plato’s imitation of Homer:  “We ought not to regard a good imitation as a theft, but as a beautiful idea of him who undertakes to imitate, by forming himself on the invention and the work of another man; for he enters into the lists like a new wrestler, to dispute the prize with the former champion.  This sort of emulation, says Hesiod, is honourable, [Greek:  Agathe d’ eris esti Brotoisin]—­when we combat for victory with a hero, and are not without glory even in our overthrow.  Those great men, whom we propose to ourselves as patterns of our imitation, serve us as a torch, which is lifted up before us, to enlighten our passage, and often elevate our thoughts as high as the conception we have of our author’s genius.”

I have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall contract myself in the two last.  The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added or changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakespeare altered, and mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether new.  And the whole fifth act, both the plot and the writing, are my own additions.