Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew
them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious
malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more
innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and
little regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than
truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil
in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is
so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to
write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system
of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably
must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from
him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always
careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he
carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at
the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their
examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his
age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the
world better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or place.

The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration
may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not
always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities
of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems
to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which
would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part