------She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’th’bud,
Feed on her damask cheek:  She pin’d in thought,
And sat like patience on a monument. 
Smiling at grief.

But what is characteristically the talent of Shakespear, and which perhaps is the most excellent part of the drama, is the manners of his persons, in acting and in speaking what is proper for them, and fit to be shewn by the Poet, in making an apparent difference between his characters, and marking every one in the strongest manner.

Poets who have not a little succeeded in writing for the stage, have yet fallen short of their great original in the general power of the drama; none ever found so ready a road to the heart; his tender scenes are inexpressibly moving, and such as are meant to raise terror, are no less alarming; but then Shakespeare does not much shine when he is considered by particular passages; he sometimes debases the noblest images in nature by expressions which are too vulgar for poetry.  The ingenious author of the Rambler has observed, that in the invocation of Macbeth, before he proceeds to the murder of Duncan, when he thus expresses himself,

---------Come thick night
And veil thee, in the dunnest smoke of hell,
Nor heaven peep thro’ the blanket of the dark,
To cry hold, hold.

That the words dunnest and blanket, which are so common in vulgar mouths, destroy in some manner the grandeur of the image, and were two words of a higher signification, and removed above common use, put in their place, I may challenge poetry itself to furnish an image so noble.  Poets of an inferior class, when considered by particular passages, are excellent, but then their ideas are not so great, their drama is not so striking, and it is plain enough that they possess not souls so elevated as Shakespeare’s.  What can be more beautiful than the flowing enchantments of Rowe; the delicate and tender touches of Otway and Southern, or the melting enthusiasm of Lee and Dryden, but yet none of their pieces have affected the human heart like Shakespeare’s.

But I cannot conclude the character of Shakespeare, without taking notice, that besides the suffrage of almost all wits since his time in his favour, he is particularly happy in that of Dryden, who had read and studied him clearly, sometimes borrowed from him, and well knew where his strength lay.  In his Prologue to the Tempest altered, he has the following lines;

  Shakespear, who taught by none, did first impart,
  To Fletcher wit, to lab’ring Johnson, art. 
  He, monarch-like gave there his subjects law,
  And is that nature which they paint and draw;
  Fletcher reached that, which on his heights did grow,
  While Johnson crept, and gathered all below: 
  This did his love, and this his mirth digest,
  One imitates him most, the other best. 
  If they have since outwrit all other men,
  ’Tis from the drops which fell from