The sand heap by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place.

The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of _Shakespeare_.
If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance.

The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue.

He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of our language.
These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionally constant, but as containing general and predominant truth.
_Shakespeare's_ familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: His characters are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities.
_Shakespeare_ with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit.

I shall shew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration.