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their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and fometimes giving fhelter to myrtles and to rofes; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diverfity. Other poets difplay cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into fhape, and polifhed unto brightnefs. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incruftations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

It has been much difputed, whether Shakespeare owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of fcholaftick education, the precepts of critical science, and the examples of ancient authours.

There has always prevailed a tradition, that ShakeSpeare wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages. Johnfon, his friend, affirms, that he had small Latin, and no Greek; who, befides that he had no imaginable temptation to falfehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquifitions of Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be opposed..

Some have imagined, that they have discovered, deep learning in many imitations of old writers; but the examples which I have known urged, were drawn from books tranflated in his time; or were

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fuch eafy coincidencies of thought, as will happen to all who confider the fame fubjects; or fuch remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in converfation, and are tranfmitted through the world in proverbial sentences.

I have found it remarked, that, in this important fentence, Go before, I'll follow, we read a tranflation of, I prae, fequar. I have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleafing dream, fays, I cry'd to fleep again, the authour imitates Anacreon, who had, like every other man, the fame wifh on the fame occafion.

There are a few paffages which may pass for imitations, but fo few, that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it.

The Comedy of Errors is confeffedly taken from the Menæchmi of Plautus; from the only play of Plautus which was then in English. What can be more probable, than that he who copied that, would have copied more; but that those which were not translated were inacceffible?

Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That his plays have fome French fcenes proves but little; he might eafily procure them to be written, and probably, even though he had known the language in the common degree, he could not have written it without affiftance. In the ftory of Romeo and Juliet he is obferved to have followed the English translation, where it deviates from the Ita

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lian; but this on the other part proves nothing againft his knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what he knew himself, but what was known to his audience.

It is most likely that he had learned Latin fufficiently to make him acquainted with conftruction, but that he never advanced to an eafy perufal of the Roman authours. Concerning his skill in modern languages, I can find no fufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of French or Italian authours have been difcovered, though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined to believe, that he read little more than English, and chofe for his fables only fuch tales as he found tranflated.

That much knowledge is fcattered over his works is very juftly obferved by Pope, but it is often fuch knowledge as books did not fupply. He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be content to study him in the clofet, he must look for his meaning fometimes among the fports of the field, and fometimes among the manufactures of the shop.

There is however proof enough that he was a very diligent reader, nor was our language then fo indigent of books, but that he might very liberally indulge his curiofity without excurfion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authours were tranflated, and fome of the Greek; the reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topicks of human difquifition had found Engli writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not

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only with diligence, but fuccefs. This was a flock of knowledge fufficient for a mind so capable of apfo propriating and improving it.

Bnt the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own genius. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no effays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other might be carried. Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood. Shakespeare may be truly faid to have introduced them both amongst us, and in fome of his happier fcenes to have carried them both to the utmoft height.

By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not eafily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unfettled. Rowe is of opinion, that perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like thofe of other writers, in his leaft perfect works; art bad fo little, and nature fo large a share in what he did, that for ought I know, fays he, the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, were the best. But the power of nature is only the power of ufing to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity fupplies. Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by ftudy and experience, can only affift in combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he muft increase his ideas, like other mortals, by gradual acquifition, he, like them, grew wifer as he

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grew older, could difplay life better, as he knew it more, and inftruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply inftructed.

There is a vigilance of obfervation and accuracy of diftinction which books and precepts cannot confer from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds. Shakespeare must have looked upon mankind with perfpicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their charafters from preceding writers, and diverfify them only by the accidental appendages of prefent manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the fame. Our authour had both matter and form to provide; for except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which fhewed life in its native colours.

The conteft about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse the mind, to trace the paffions to their fources, to unfold the feminal principles of vice and virtue, or found the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All thofe enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable ftudy, have been made fometimes with nice difcernment, but often with idle fubtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was fatisfied, exhibited only the fuperficial appearances of action, related

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