present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily:
When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles
of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him
injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many
times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches,
his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when
some great occasion is presented to him: No man can say, he ever
had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as
high above the rest of poets,

"Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."

It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary;
that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure.
But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things;
that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by
accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other
writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through
his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind,
which despised its own performances, when it compared them with
its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which
the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of
restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the
judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce
my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had