[Sidenote:  The Question on Shakespeare’s Learning handled.]

It has been allow’d on all hands, far our Author was indebted to Nature; it is not so well agreed, how much he ow’d to Languages and acquir’d Learning.  The Decisions on this Subject were certainly set on Foot by the Hint from Ben Jonson, that he had small Latin and less Greek:  And from this Tradition, as it were, Mr. Rowe has thought fit peremptorily to declare, that, “It is without Controversy, he had no Knowledge of the Writings of the ancient Poets, for that in his Works we find no Traces of any thing which looks like an Imitation of the Ancients.  For the Delicacy of his Taste (continues He,) and the natural Bent of his own great Genius (equal, if not superior, to some of the Best of theirs;) would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much Pleasure, that some of their fine Images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mix’d with, his own Writings:  so that his not copying, at least, something from them, may be an Argument of his never having read them.”  I shall leave it to the Determination of my Learned Readers, from the numerous Passages, which I have occasionally quoted in my Notes, in which our Poet seems closely to have imitated the Classics, whether Mr. Rowe’s Assertion be so absolutely to be depended on.  The Result of the Controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our Author’s Honour:  how happily he could imitate them, if that Point be allow’d; or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing any thing to Imitation.

Tho’ I should be very unwilling to allow Shakespeare so poor a Scholar, as Many have labour’d to represent him, yet I shall be very cautious of declaring too positively on the other side of the Question:  that is, with regard to my Opinion of his Knowledge in the dead Languages.  And therefore the Passages, that I occasionally quote from the Classics, shall not be urged as Proofs that he knowingly imitated those Originals; but brought to shew how happily he has express’d himself upon the same Topicks.  A very learned Critick of our own Nation has declar’d, that a Sameness of Thought and Sameness of Expression too, in Two Writers of a different Age, can hardly happen, without a violent Suspicion of the Latter copying from his Predecessor.  I shall not therefore run any great Risque of a Censure, tho’ I should venture to hint, that the Resemblance, in Thought and Expression, of our Author and an Ancient (which we should allow to be Imitation in One, whose Learning was not question’d) may sometimes take its Rise from Strength of Memory, and those Impressions which he ow’d to the School.  And if we may allow a Possibility of This, considering that, when he quitted the School, he gave into his Father’s Profession and way of Living, and had, ’tis likely, but a slender Library of Classical Learning; and considering what a Number of Translations, Romances, and Legends, started about his Time, and a little before; (most of which,’tis very evident, he read;) I think, it may easily be reconcil’d, why he rather schemed his Plots and Charaters from these more latter Informations, than went back to those Fountains, for which he might entertain a sincere Veneration, but to which he could not have so ready a Recourse.