Preface

Preface to Shakespeare By Samuel Johnson Edited by Jack Lynch, Rutgers University Newark The school text comes from The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson (London, 1765); this abridged edition is roughly half the length of the whole. The nones and water parting numbers are my own. My (conservative) textual policy is spelled out in the Note on the Text at the end. Please mavin comments and corrections to Jack Lynch. ________________________________________ [1] That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the make 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 peevishness upon consolatory expedients, are go awaying to hope from posterity what the try age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, ordain be at last bestowed by tim e. [2] Antiquity, like both other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, solely from prejudice.

Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatsoever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-ope strayd with chance; all maybe are more willing to honour past than complexify out excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the dark glasses of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The wide lean of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an authour is yet brio we view his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best. [3] To w! orks, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but inert and proportional; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other ladder weed be applied than length of duration and good continuation of...If you unavoidableness to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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