title: Preface to Shakespeare
author:  Samuel Johnson 
description: Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709  13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.
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  # Preface to Shakespeare's Plays
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Samuel Johnson
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
  
  Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts
  
  
  the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries
  
  
  that reverence it, not from reason, but from pre-
  
  
  judice. Some seem to 