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 said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height.

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 “perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for aught I know,” says 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.

There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction 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 diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same.  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 showed life in its native colours.

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced.  Speculation had not yet attempted to analyze the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action.  All those inquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted.  The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the causes, and were formed for such 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 business and amusements.