“In truth,” said Gray, “Shakespeare’s language is one of his principal beauties; and he has no less advantage over your Addisons and Rowes in this than in those other great excellences you mention. Every word in him is a picture.”(29) The first book devoted directly to the examination of Shakespeare’s characters was by William Richardson, Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. His _Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare’s remarkable Characters_, which dealt with Macbeth, Hamlet, Jaques, and Imogen, appeared in 1774; ten years later he added a second series on Richard III., King Lear, and Timon of Athens; and in 1789 he concluded his character studies with his essay on Falstaff. As the titles show, Richardson’s work has a moral purpose. His intention, as he tells us, was to make poetry subservient to philosophy, and to employ it in tracing the principles of human conduct. Accordingly, he has prejudiced his claims as a literary critic. He is not interested in Shakespeare’s art for its own sake; but that he should use Shakespeare’s characters as the subjects of moral disquisitions is eloquent testimony to their truth to nature. His classical bias, excusable in a Professor of Latin, is best seen in his essay “On the Faults of Shakespeare,”(30) of which the title was alone sufficient to win him the contempt of later critics. His essays are the dull effusions of a clever man. Though they are not inspiriting, they are not without interest. He recognised that the source of Shakespeare’s greatness is that he became for the time the person whom he represented. Before the appearance of Richardson’s _Philosophical Analysis_, Thomas Whately had written his _Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakespeare_; but it was not published till 1785. The author, who died in 1772, had abandoned it in order to complete, in 1770, his _Observations on Modern Gardening_. The book contains only a short introduction and a comparison of Macbeth and Richard III. The fragment is sufficient, however, to indicate more clearly than the work of Richardson the coming change. The author has himself remarked on the novelty of his method. The passage must be quoted, as it is the first definite statement that the examination of Shakespeare’s characters should be the main object of Shakespearian criticism: