Adams, Colonel Bath, and Squire Western in Fielding; and of Strap,
Morgan, and Pipes, in Smollett, impress themselves as strongly on the
memory, and seem to be as really individuals whom we have seen and
conversed with, as many of those which are the most decidedly marked in
Shakspeare himself; that therefore the powers requisite for producing
such descriptions are as rare and extraordinary in one instance as in
the other. For the poet has this peculiar to himself; that he
communicates something from his own mind, which, at the same time that
it does not prevent his personages from being kept equally distinct from
one another, raises them all above the level of our common nature.
Shakspeare, whom we appear not only to know, personally, but to admire
and love as one superior to the cast of his kind,--

Sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,

has left some trick of his own lineaments and features discoverable in
the whole brood.

Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo
Seminibus.

It is this which makes us willing to have our remembrance of his
characters refreshed by constant repetition, which gives us such a
pleasure in summoning them before us, as "age cannot wither, nor custom
stale." This is a quality which we do not find in Fielding, with all
that consummate skill which he employs in developing his story; nor in
Smollett, with all that vivacity and heartiness of purpose with which he
carries on his narrative.

Of Smollett's poems much does not remain to be said. The Regicide is