is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his
work, and, in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch
the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most
vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced
or imperfectly represented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to
one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and
opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but
of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal
than judgment, to transfer to his imagined in interpolators. We
need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the
loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothic mythology
of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of
chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages
of learning, has, in his "Arcadia", confounded the pastoral with
the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with
those of turbulence, violence and adventure.

In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages
his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest of sarcasm;
their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious;
neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are
sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of
refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his
time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly
supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and reserve,
yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant.
There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable
to others, and a writer ought to chuse the best.