times giving shelter to myrtles and to roses ;

filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratify- ing the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakspeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by in- crustations, debased byimpurities,and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals. . . .

There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which books and pre- cepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds. Shak- speare must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their char- acters from preceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners ; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same. Our author has both matter and form to provide ; for, except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which showed life in its native colours.

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced.