Preface to Shakespeare

Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare published in 1765 is a comment on the argument over the ancients and moderns. Johnson forwards his criticism with moral consideration and prescribes imitation which is closer to truth, reality and to the right.

Excerpts from the book:

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours 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 eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.