ADDISON AND SHAKSPEARE.
TO 1.1113 EDITOR OF TUE SPECTATOR.
London, January 5, MI.
DEAR SPEC.—A charge, amounting to little short of literary heresy towards SHAKSPEARE, the "god of our idolatry," was lately preferred by the Tatter against Am:moss—the master-mind of your own great prototype. He was accused of want of reverence for the genius of the gentle WILLY ; and, as proof of his high crime and misdemeanour, it was alleged that no quotations from the "Swan of Avon's" dramatic works were to be found in ADDISON'S writings.--The Spectator certainly contains some passages from SHAXSPEARE' s plays; and the entire and perfect refutation of the arraignment may be found in No. 592—An Essay On Dramatic Improvements and Criticisms—one of AnDts ow' s papers ; from which I now extract the concluding passage: "Our inimitable Shakspeare is a stumbling-block to the whole tribe of these rigid critics. Who would not rather read one of his plays, where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic, where there is not one of them violated ? Shakspeare was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry ; and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo, and the Nine Muses, in the vein of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, without any help from art."
Want of reverence, indeed ! What finer compliment could be paid, even to SIIAKSPEARE? Yours, dear Spec.
PETER. HASIL
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