
the other, sets the pathetic of the former in a stronger light. The very
impatience which a reader feels, while delayed by the coarse pleasantries of
vulgar actors from arriving at the knowledge of the important catastrophe he
expects, perhaps heightens, certainly proves that he has been artfully
interested in, the depending event. But I had higher authority than my own
opinion for this conduct. That great master of nature, Shakespeare, was the
model I copied. Let me ask if his tragedies of Hamlet and Julius Caesar would
not lose a considerable share of the spirit and wonderful beauties, if the
humour of the grave-diggers, the fooleries of Polonius, and the clumsy jests of
the Roman citizens were omitted, or vested in heroics? Is not the eloquence of
Antony, the nobler and affectedly unaffected oration of Brutus, artificially
exalted by the rude bursts of nature from the mouths of their auditors? These
touches remind one of the Grecian sculptor, who, to convey the idea of a
Colossus within the dimensions of a seal, inserted a little boy measuring his
thumb.
    No, says Voltaire in his edition of Corneille, this mixture of buffoonery
and solemnity is intolerable - Voltaire is a genius1 - but not of Shakespeare's
magnitude. Without recurring to disputable authority, I appeal from Voltaire to
himself. I shall not avail myself of his former encomiums on our mighty poet;
though the French critic has twice translated the same speech in Hamlet, some
years ago in admiration, latterly in derision; and I am sorry to find that his
judgment grows weaker, when it ought to be farther matured. But I shall make use
of his own words, delivered on the general topic of the theatre, when he was
neither thinking to recommend or decry Shakespeare's practice; consequently at a
moment when Voltaire was impartial. In the preface to his Enfant prodigue, that
exquisite piece of which I declare my admiration, and which, should I live
twenty years longer, I trust I should never attempt to ridicule, he has these
words, speaking of comedy, [but equally applicable to tragedy, if tragedy is, as
surely it ought to be, a picture of human life; nor can I conceive why
occasional pleasantry ought more to be banished from the tragic scene, than
pathetic seriousness from the comic] On y voit un melange de serieux et de
plaisanterie, de comique et de touchant; souvent même une seule avanture produit
tous ces contrastes. Rien n'est si commun qu'une maison dans laquelle un pere
gronde, une fille occupée de sa passion pleure; le fils se moque des deux, et
