Mr. THEOBALD’s
PREFACE.[1]
THE attempt to write upon Shakespeare is like going into a large, a spacious, and a splendid dome through the conveyance of a narrow and obscure entry. A glare of light suddenly breaks upon you beyond what the avenue at first promised: and a thousand beauties of genius and character, like so many gaudy apartments pouring at once upon the eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the mind. The prospect is too wide to come within the compass of a single view: it is a gay confusion of pleasing objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general admiration: and they must be separated, and eyed distinctly, in order to give the proper entertainment.
And as in great piles of building, some parts are often finished up to hit the taste of the connoisseur; others more negligently put together, to strike the fancy of a common and unlearned beholder: some parts are made stupendously magnificent and grand, to surprise with the vast design an execution of the architect; others are contracted, to amuse you with his neatness and elegance in little. So, in Shakespeare, we may find traits that will stand the test of the severest judgement; and strokes as carefully hit off, to the level of the more ordinary capacities: some descriptions raised to the pitch of grandeur, as to astonish you with the compass and elevation of his thought: and others copying nature within so narrow, so confined a circle, as if the author’s talent lay only at drawing in miniature.
In how many points of light must we be obliged to gaze at this great poet! In how many branches of excellence to
- ↑ This is Mr. Theobal’s preface to his second edition in 1740, and had been much curtailed by himself after its appearance before the impression in 1733.
Steevens.
