pal fchools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to profeffed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The public was grofs and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment ftill valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened to literary curiofity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind, who has feafted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste of the infipidity of truth. A play which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impreffion; he that wrote for fuch an audience was under the n ceffity of looking round for strange events and fabulous tranfactions, and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to fkilful curiofity.

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is reasonable to fuppofe, that he chofe the most popular, fuch as were read by many, and related by more ; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the story in their hands.

The ftories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time acceffible and familiar.

The fable of As you like it, which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English profe, which the criticks have now to feek

in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English hiftories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by verfions, they fupplied him with new subjects; he dilated fome of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by North.

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more eafily caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and fuch is the power of the marvellous, even over those who despise it, that every man finds his mind more ftrongly feized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in fecuring the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiofity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.

The fhows and bustle with which his plays abound have the fame original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our author's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or proceffions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted fome vifible and difcriminated ev. nts, as comments on the dialogue. He knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our ftage fomething must be done as well as faid, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however mufical or elegant, paffionate or sublime.

Voltaire expreffes his wonder, that our authour's extravagances are endured by a nation, which has feen the tragedy of Cato. Let him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which enamour us of its authour, but we fee nothing that acquaints us with human fentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the nobleft progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning, but Othello is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a fplendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the compofition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of Cato, but we think on Addifon.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the compofition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interfperfed fometimes with weeds and brambles, and fometimes giving fhelter to myrtles and rofes; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diverfity. Other poets difplay cabinets of precio rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished unto brightness. Shakespeaee opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, 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 fcience, 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. Johnson, his friend, affirms, that be bad 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 teftimony 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 translated in his time; or were fuch easy coincidencies of thought, as will happen to all who confider the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in converfation, and are transmitted through the world in proverbial fentences.

I have found it remarked, that, in this important fentence, Go before, I'll follow, we read a translation 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 same wish on the fame occafion.

There are a few paffages which may pafs 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 thofe which were not tranflated were inacceffible?

Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That his plays have some French fcenes, proves but little : be 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. İn the ftory of Romeo and Juliet he is obferved to have followed the English translation, where it deviates from the Italian; but this on the other part proves nothing against 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 construction, but that he never advanced to an easy 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 dif.overed, though the Italian poetry was then in high efteem, 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 unde: ftand Shakespeare, must not be content to study him in the closet; he muft look for his meaning fometimes among the sports 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 translated, and some of the Greek; the re