The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals. Preface to Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1765. In _The Rambler_, No. 156 (14 Sept. 1751), Johnson wrote: “Instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of Shakespeare, we ought perhaps to pay new honours to that transcendent and unbounded genius that could preside over the passions in sport; who, to actuate the affections, needed not the slow gradation of common means, but could fill the heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even of Shakespeare’s poetry might have been greater, had he not counteracted himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his heroes, had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his buffoons.” GEORGE KEATE, 1768 (1729-1797) Yes! jealous wits may still for empire strive, Still keep the flames of critick rage alive: Our Shakespeare yet shall all his rights maintain, And crown the triumphs of Eliza’s reign, Above control, above each classick rule, His tutress Nature, and the World his school. On daring pinions borne, to him was given Th’ aerial range of Fancy’s brightest Heaven, To bid rapt thought o’er noblest heights aspire, And wake each passion with a Muse of Fire. Revere his genius—to the dead be just, And spare the laurels, that o’ershade the dust. Low sleeps the bard, _in cold obstruction laid_, Nor asks the chaplet from a rival’s head. O’er the dear vault, Ambition’s utmost bound, Unheard shall Fame her airy trumpet sound! Unheard alike, nor grief nor transport raise, Thy blast of censure, or thy note of praise! As Raphael’s own creation grac’d his hearse, And sham’d the pomp of ostentatious verse, Shall Shakespeare’s honours by himself be paid, And Nature perish ere his pictures fade. _Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire._ 1768. _Poetical Works_, 1781, pp. 136-7.