They will exult in danger, and rush to revenge or death. They will plunge their swords in the heart of their oppressor; or they will teach him, like Charles, to atone upon the scaffold for the tears and the blood of his people; and while in the eyes of their countrymen, they read their glory[115], they will perhaps reflect with a smile, that some slavish pedant, some pensioned traitor to the rights of mankind, is one day to mark them out as objects of public detestation[116]. 'The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind.--Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy, and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist. For this probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved[117].' The weakest of Dr Johnson's admirers will blush in reading this passage. He very fairly denies every degree of merit, to every dramatic writer, of every age or nation, Shakespeare alone excepted. What can be more ridiculous than this? 'Every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, by exciting restless and _unquenchable_[118] curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through[119].' But the Doctor overthrows all this within a few pages, for Shakespeare has '_perhaps_ not _one_ play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a cotemporary writer, _would be heard to the conclusion_[120].' The Rambler cannot always suppress his thorough contempt for the taste of the public. He no doubt laughs internally at their folly in admiring him. * * * * * I proceed to the Doctor's English Dictionary, and shall begin with quoting the remarks already made by a judicious friend, on this subject.