tually taken by a subsequent labourer in the same department, Dr. Sewell. Mr. Pope supposed "little ground for the common opinion of his want of learning:" once indeed he made a proper distinction between learning and languages, as I would be understood to do in my title-page; but unfortunately he forgot it in the course of his disquifition, and endeavoured to perfuade himself that Shakspeare's acquaintance with the ancients might be actually proved by the fame medium as Jonfon's. Mr. Theobald is " very unwilling to allow him fo poor a scholar, as many have laboured to represent him;" and yet is "cautious of declaring too positively on the other fide of the question." Dr. Warburton hath exposed the weakness of fome arguments from fufpected imitations; and yet offers others, which, I doubt not, he could as easily have refuted. Mr. Upton wonders " with what kind of reasoning any one could be so far imposed upon, as to imagine that Shakspeare had no learning;" and lashes with much zeal and fatisfaction " the pride and pertness of dunces, who, under such a name would gladly shelter their own idleness and ignorance." He, like the learned knight, at every anomaly in grammar or metre, Hath hard words ready to show why, How would the old bard have been aftonished to have found, that he had very skilfully given the trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic, COMMONLY called the ithyphallic measure to the Witches in Macbeth! and that now and then a halting verse afforded a most beautiful instance of the pes proceleusmaticus ! "But," continues Mr. Upton, "it was a learned age; Roger Afcham assures us, that queen Elizabeth read more Greek every day, than some dignitaries of the church did Latin in a whole week." This appears very probable; and a pleasant proof it is of the general learning of the times, and of Shakspeare in particular. I wonder, he did not corroborate it with an extract from her injunctions to her clergy, that "fuch as were but mean readers should peruse over before, once or twice, the chapters and homilies, to the intent they might read to the better understanding of the people." Dr. Grey declares, that Shakspeare's knowledge in the Greek and Latin tongues cannot reasonably be called in question. Dr. Dodd supposes it proved, that he was not such a novice in learning and antiquity as some people would pretend. And to close the whole, for I suspect you to be tired of quotation, Mr. Whalley, the ingenious editor of Jonfon, hath written a piece expressly on this fide the question: perhaps from a very excusable partiality, he was willing to draw Shakspeare from the field of nature to claffick ground, where alone, he knew, his author could poffibly cope with him. These criticks, and many others their coadjutors, have supposed themselves able to trace Shakspeare in the writings of the ancients; and have fometimes perfuaded us of their own learning, whatever became of their author's. Plagiarisms have been discovered in every natural description and every moral sentiment. Indeed by the kind affistance of the various Excerpta, Sententiæ, and Flores, this business may be effected with very little expence of time or fagacity; as Addison hath demonstrated in his .comment on Chevy-chafe, and Wagstaff on Tom Thumb; and I myself will engage to give you quotations from the elder English writers (for, to own the truth, I was once idle enough to collect such,) which shall carry with them at leaft an equal degree of fimilarity. But there can be no occafion of wasting any future time in this department: the world is now in poffeffion of the Marks of Imitation. Shakspeare however hath frequent allusions to the fa&s and fables of antiquity." Granted:-and as Mat. Prior fays, to save the effusion of more Christian ink, I will endeavour to show, how they came to his acquaint ance. It is notorious, that much of his matter of fact knowledge is deduced from Plutarch: but in what language he read him, hath yet been the question. Mr. Upton is pretty confident of his skill in the original, and corrects accordingly the errors of his copyists by the Greek standard. Take a few instances, which will elucidate this matter fufficiently. In the third act of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavius represents to his courtiers the imperial pomp of those illuftrious lovers, and the arrangement of their dominion, Unto her He gave the 'stablishment of Egypt, made her Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, Absolute queen. Read Libya, fays the critick authoratively, as is plain from Plutarch, Πρώτην μὲν ἀπέφηνε Κλεοπάτραν βασίλισσαν Αἰγύπλε καὶ Κύπρο και ΛΙΒΥΗΣ, καὶ κοίλης Συρίας. This is very true: Mr. Heath accedes to the correction, and Mr. Johnson admits it into the text: but turn to the tranflation, from the French of Amyot, by Thomas North, in folio, 1579, and you will at once fee the origin of the mistake. " First "First of all he did establish Cleopatra queene of Ægypt, of Cyprus, of Lydia, and the lower Syria." My meffenger He hath whipt with rods, darcs me to perfonal combat, I have many other ways to die; mean time Laugh at his challenge. "What a reply is this?" cries Mr. Upton, " 'tis acknowledging he should fail under the unequal combat. But if we read, Let the old ruffian know He hath many other ways to die; mean time I laugh at his challenge. we have the poignancy and the very repartee of Cæfar in Plutarch." This correction was first made by Sir Thomas Hanmer, and Mr. Johnson hath received it. Moft indifputably it is the sense of Plutarch, and given so in the modern tranflation: but Shakspeare was misled by the ambiguity of the old one : "Antonius sent again to challenge Cafar to fight him: Cæfar answered, That be had many other ways to die, than so." In the third act of Julius Cafar, Antony, in his wellknown harangue to the people, repeats a part of the emperor's will: -To every Roman citizen he gives, To every sev'ral man, seventy-five drachmas. " Our "Our author certainly wrote," fays Mr. Theobald, "On that fide Tiber Trans Tiberim-prope Cæfaris hortos. And Plutarch, whom Shakspeare very diligently studied, expressly declares, that he left the publick his gardens and walks, πέραν τῷ Ποταμᾶ, beyond the Tyber." This emendation likewise hath been adopted by the subsequent editors; but hear again the old tranflation, where Shakspeare's study lay: "He bequeathed unto every citizen of Rome seventy-five drachmas a man, and he left his gardens and arbours unto the people, which he had on this fide of the river of Tyber." I could furnish you with many more instances, but these are as good as a thoufand. Hence had our author his characteristick knowledge of Brutus and Antony, upon which much argumentation for his learning hath been founded: and hence literatim the epitaph on Timon, which, it was once prefumed, he had corrected from the blunders of the Latin version, by his own superior knowledge of the original. I cannot however omit a passage from Mr. Pope. "The speeches copied from Plutarch in Coriolanus may, I think, be as well made an instance of the learning of Shakspeare, as those copy'd from Cicero in Catiline, of Ben Jonfon's." Let us inquire into this matter, and transcribe a speech for a specimen. Take the famous one of Volumnia: Should we be filent and not speak, our raiment Conftrains |