thing in Shakespeare, he encountered a storm of protest, the echoes of which persist to this day. His answer to Garrick’s objections deserves a wider application: ‘Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole with Shakespeare on the whole; but only maintaining that Congreve has one finer passage than any that can be found in Shakespeare. Sir, a man may have no more than ten guineas in the world, but he may have those ten guineas in one piece; and so may have a finer piece than a man who has ten thousand pounds: but then he has only one ten-guinea piece. What I mean is, that you can shew me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any intermixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect.’ A few days later, in conversation with Boswell, he again talked of the passage in Congreve, and said, ‘Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion. If I come to an orchard, and say there’s no fruit here, and then comes a poring man, who finds two apples and three pears, and tells me, “Sir, you are mistaken, I have found both apples and pears,” I should laugh at him: what would that be to the purpose?’ Johnson is not attacking Shakespeare; he is assuming his greatness, and helping to define it by combating popular follies. He knew well that Shakespeare towers above the greatest writers of the correct school. ‘Corneille is to Shakespeare,’ he once said, ‘as a clipped hedge is to a forest.’ But he had small patience with the critics who would have everything for their idol, and who claimed for the forest all the symmetry and neatness of the hedge.
