It will be seen, then, that Shakespeare was at this time kept prominently before the eyes of the reading public. He was equally a topic of interest with men of letters who confined themselves to no special branch of literature. The attitude of the eighteenth century essayists toward Shakespeare was essentially one of admiration and respect for his genius. They found fault with his plays, it is true, frequently enough, but almost always apologetically. He was not infrequently held up as a model for modern dramatists to follow. The _Connoisseur_, for example, printed a paper discussing the sources of the _Merchant of Venice_; and while elaborating the fact that the plot was borrowed, insisted on the genius displayed in the use which Shakespeare made of it. The _Guardian_, again, enlarges on the naturalness of Shakespeare’s characters—remarkable at a time when poetry was, above all things, rhetorical and artificial. Let us glance now at the poetical critics. It will be noticed that many of the pieces printed in the body of this book appear under names that are not very familiar, and that the eighteenth century is responsible for the majority of them. In modern anthologies it is not usual to include selections from the works of such poets; nor, indeed, if literary excellence be the compiler’s object, is it expedient. They are included here not because their effusions appear to me to reach even a modest standard of merit, but because they were accepted as good poets by their contemporaries and by the literary dictator, Dr. Johnson. Johnson, it is true, disclaimed responsibility for the choice of names represented in his edition of British poets, but the repudiation cannot be considered of much importance. Johnson’s name had probably more weight with publishers than that of any other man of his time, and it is hardly likely that his advice in the matter of inclusion or rejection, had he thought it worth while to give it, would have been ignored. So one may feel certain that every name on his list appeared with his approval. The laudatory criticisms embodied in the biographies, which he asserted marked the extent of his commission, prove as much. Take Blackmore, for example, whose _Creation_ was included, on Johnson’s recommendation, in his edition of the poets. “This poem,” he says, “if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English Muse.” Posterity, on the whole, has not given the Muse’s favourite much of a welcome, and Blackmore is one of a number of such chosen ones. But even Johnson might have known better. They had their reputations ready made for them by patrons. It was the age of patrons and extravagant compliment, and Shakespeare in the hands of these small poets took a place similar to that of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. Poetical flatterers of great men permitted him to fill the position of comparative in the scale of eulogy, the object of their praises being