knowledge as books did not fupply. He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be content to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning fometimes among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures of the shop.

There is however proof enough that he was a very diligent reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that he might very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authors were tranflated, and fome of the Greek; the Reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning, most of the topicks of human disquisition had found English writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence, but fuccess. This was a stock of knowledge fufficient for a mind fo capable of appropriating and improving it.

But 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 essays 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 scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height.

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By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. Rowe is of opinion, that perbaps

we

we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had fo little, and nature so 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 using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity supplies. Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his ideas, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he, like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better, as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply instructed.

4

There is a vigilance of observation 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 perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their characters from preceding writers, and diverfify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the fame. Our author 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 shewed life in its native colours.

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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 sources, to unfold the feminal principles of vice and virtue, or found the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made fometimes with nice difcernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the fuperficial appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the causes, and were formed for fuch as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. Mankind was not then to be studied in the closet; he that would know the world, was under the necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he could in its bufiness and amusements.

Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured his curiofity, by facilitating his access. Shakespeare had no fuch advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. Many works of genius and learning have been performed in states of life, that appear very little favourable to thought or to enquiry; fo many, that he who confiders them is inclined to think that he sees enterprize and perfeverance predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and hindrance vanish before them. The genius of Shakespeare was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned; demned; the incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, as dew-drops from a lion's

mane.

Though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little afsistance to furmount them, he has been able to obtain an exact knowledge of many modes of life, and many cafts of native dispositions; to vary them with great multiplicity; to mark them by nice distinctions; and to shew them in full view by proper combinations. In this part of his performances he had none to imitate, but has himself been imitated by all fucceeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether from all his fuccessors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country.

Nor was his attention confined to the actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always fome peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. It may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations preferve their reputation, and that the following generations of wit, after a short celebrity, fink into oblivion. The first, whoever they be, must take their fentiments and descriptions immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just, their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments acknowledged by every breast. Those whom their fame invites to the fame studies, copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one age gain such authority, as to stand in [C3]

the

the place of nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a little, becomes at last capricious and casual. Shakespeare, whether life or nature be his subject, shews plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are complete.

Perhaps it would not be easy to find any author, except Homer, who invented so much as Shakespeare, who so much advanced the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his. He feems, fays Dennis, to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony, that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by diffyllable and trifyllable terminations. For the diversity diftinguishes it from heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to common use makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when we are writing profe; we make such verse in common conversation.

I know not whether this praise is rigoroufsly just, The dissyllable termination, which the critick rightly appropriates to the drama, is to be found, though, I think, not in Gorboduc, which is confessedly before our author; yet in Hieronnymo, of which the date is not certain, but which there is reason to believe at least as old as his earliest plays. This however is certain, that he is the first who taught either tragedy or comedy to please, there being no theatrical piece of any