Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of Shakespeare broke forth! What were the English, and what (let me ask you) were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he flourished? The advances he made towards the highest perfection both of tragedy and comedy are amazing! In the principal points, in the power of exciting terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has excelled him, and very few have equalled. BOILEAU Do you think he was equal in comedy to Moliere? POPE In _comic force_ I do: but in the fine and delicate strokes of satire, and what is called _genteel comedy_, he was greatly inferior to that admirable writer. There is nothing in him to compare with the _Misanthrope_, the _Ecole des Femmes_, or _Tartuffe_. BOILEAU This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to acknowledge. A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are fanatics. POPE He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste. BOILEAU I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius, though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays; absurdities which no critic of my nation can pardon. POPE We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his beauties. _Dialogues of the Dead_, xiv., 4th edition, 1765. XIV. _Boileau—Pope_, pp. 125-128. Three editions of _Dialogues of the Dead_ were published in 1760. Practically the whole of the passage quoted above appeared for the first time in the fourth edition in 1765. LAURENCE STERNE, 1768 (1713-1768) “_The Passport—Versailles._” I could not conceive why the Count de B * * * had gone so abruptly out of the room, any more than I could conceive why he had put the Shakespeare into his pocket—_Mysteries which must explain themselves, are not worth the loss of time which a conjecture about them takes up_: it was better to read Shakespeare; so, taking up _Much Ado about Nothing_, I transported myself instantly from the chair I sat in to Messina in Sicily, and got so busy with Don Pedro and Benedick and Beatrice, that I thought not of Versailles, the Count, or the Passport.