be properly transferred from the preſent poſſeſſor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reaſon for choice.
Other dramatiſts can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf, and he that ſhould form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakeſpeare has no heroes; his ſcenes are occupied only by men, who act and ſpeak as the reader thinks that he ſhould himſelf have ſpoken or acted on the ſame occaſion: even where the agency is ſupernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers diſguiſe the moſt natural paſſions and moſt frequent incidents; ſo that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakeſpeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he repreſents will not happen, but if it were poſſible, its effects would probably be ſuch as he has aſſigned; and it may be ſaid, that he has not only ſhewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be expoſed.
This therefore is the praiſe of Shakeſpeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raiſe up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecſtaſies, by reading human ſentiments in human language; by ſcenes from which a
