to find, any that can be properly transferred from the present
possessor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is
reason for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated
characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as
the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant
and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human
affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived.
Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men,
who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have
spoken or acted on the same occasion: Even where the agency is
supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise
the most natural passions and most frequent incidents: so that he
who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world:
Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful;
the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were
possible, its effects would be probably such as he has assigned;
and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it
acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which
it cannot be exposed. This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare,
that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his
imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise
up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by
reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a
hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor
predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of
criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis