_Shakespear_, who, taught by none, did first impart To _Fletcher_ Wit, to lab’ring _Johnson_ Art: He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects Law, And is that Nature which they paint and draw. _Fletcher_ reach’d that which on his heights did grow, Whilst _Johnson_ crept and gather’d all below: This did his Love, and this his Mirth digest, One imitates him most, the other best. If they have since out-writ all other men, ’Tis with the drops which fell from _Shakespear_’s pen. The(37) Storm which vanish’d on the neighb’ring shoar, Was taught by _Shakespear_’s Tempest first to roar. That innocence and beauty which did smile In _Fletcher_, grew on this _Enchanted Isle_. But _Shakespear_’s Magick could not copied be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he. I must confess ’twas bold, nor would you now That liberty to vulgar Wits allow, Which works by Magick supernatural things: But _Shakespear_’s Pow’r is Sacred as a King’s. Prologue to _The Tempest_, as it is alter’d by Mr. _Dryden_. It is the same magick that raises the Fairies in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, the Witches in _Macbeth_, and the Ghost in _Hamlet_, with thoughts and language so proper to the parts they sustain, and so peculiar to the talent of this Writer. But of the two last of these Plays I shall have occasion to take notice, among the Tragedies of Mr. _Shakespear_. If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those rules which are establish’d by _Aristotle_, and taken from the model of the _Grecian_ stage, it would be no very hard task to find a great many faults: But as _Shakespear_ liv’d under a kind of mere light of nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a man that liv’d in a state of almost universal licence and ignorance: There was no establish’d judge, but every one took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one considers that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the present Stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatick Poetry so far as he did. The Fable is what is generally plac’d the first, among those that are reckon’d the constituent parts of a Tragick or Heroick Poem; not, perhaps, as it is the most difficult or beautiful, but as it is the first properly to be thought of in the contrivance and course of the whole; and with the Fable ought to be consider’d the fit Disposition, Order, and Conduct of its several parts. As it is not in this province of the _Drama_ that the strength and mastery of _Shakespear_ lay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natur’d trouble to point out the several faults he was guilty of in it. His Tales were seldom invented, but rather