Critics of Shakespeare

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that honors 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 from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointments upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard is yet denied by …

…was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean Scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking that nation after nation and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidence, rename his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.