By Samuel Johnson
Edited by Jack Lynch,
Rutgers University รข€" Newark
The textbook comes from The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson (London, 1765); this abridged edition is roughly half the length of the whole. The notes and divide numbers are my own. My (conservative) textual policy is spelled out in the Note on the Text at the end. Please mastermind comments and corrections to Jack Lynch.
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[1] That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the recognize due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for nodule from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by vexation upon consolatory expedients, are go awaying to hope from posterity what the give age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.
[2] Antiquity, like all other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice.
Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all mayhap are more willing to honour past than fork out excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great lean of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an authour is yet living we view his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
[3] To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and proportional; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test weed be applied than length of duration and continuance of...If you unavoidableness to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com
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