a double set of all the others. If he had them twice over, he could
only do what he can do as it is, whereas without that one he perhaps
cannot finish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing
better than anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he must
stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely
_as well_ as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to his
respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other
things well would probably interfere with and encumber him in the
execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so
far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a
multiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty of
resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps
Shakespear's tragedies would in some respects have been better if he had
never written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might well
have been spared, though they must have cost us some regret. Racine, it
is said, might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but he gave up the
cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic
Muse. If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to the
perfection of tragic composition, this was better than writing comedies
as well as Moliere and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count
those persons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better
in serious subjects. The division of labour is an excellent principle
in taste as well as in mechanics. Without this, I find from Adam Smith,
we could not have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We do
not, on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a
man's excellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of
production. _Venice Preserved_ is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate
all those nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play
in a morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after. If a
man leaves behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no