Shakespeare, indeed, without one perfect plan, has perhaps excelled all other dramatic poets as to detached scenes. But he was a wonder!—His deep knowledge of human nature, his prodigious variety of fancy and invention, and of characters drawn with the strongest, truest, and most exquisite strokes, oblige you to forget his most violent irregularities. Of the Dramatic Unities, _ib._, p. 242. WILLIAM MASON, 1759 (1724-1797) How oft I cried, “Oh come, thou tragic queen! March from thy Greece with firm majestic tread! Such as when Athens saw thee fill her scene, When Sophocles thy choral graces led: Saw thy proud pall its purple length devolve; Saw thee uplift the glittering dagger high; Ponder with fixed brow thy deep resolve, Prepar’d to strike, to triumph, and to die. Bring then to Britain’s plain that choral throng; Display thy buskin’d pomp, thy golden lyre; Give her historic forms the soul of song, And mingle Attic art with Shakespeare’s fire.” “Ah, what, fond boy, dost thou presume to claim?” The Muse replied, “mistaken suppliant, know, To light in Shakespeare’s breast the dazzling flame Exhausted all Parnassus could bestow. True, art remains; and if from his bright page Thy mimic power one vivid beam can seize, Proceed; and in that best of tasks engage, Which tends at once to profit, and to please.” _Caractacus_, 1759. THOMAS GRAY, 1759 (1716-1771) Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap [_i.e._ Albion’s] was Nature’s darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon strayed, To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: The dauntless child Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smil’d. This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy; Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears. _The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode_, 1759, iii. 1. DAVID MALLET, 1759 (1705?-1765) Pride of his own, and wonder of this age, Who first created, and yet rules, the Stage, Bold to design, all powerful to express, Shakespear each passion drew in every dress: Great above rule, and imitating none; Rich without borrowing, nature was his own. Yet is his sense debas’d by gross alloy: As gold in mines lies mix’d with dirt and clay. Now, eagle-wing’d, his heavenward flight he takes; The big stage thunders, and the soul awakes: Now, low on earth, a kindred reptile creeps; Sad Hamlet quibbles, and the hearer sleeps. _Of Verbal Criticism_, ll. 47-58. _Works_, 1759, vol. i. p. 21. EDWARD YOUNG, 1759 (1683-1765)