however favoured by nature,
could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his
ideals, 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 authour 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.

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not
yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse 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 enquiries, 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.

_Boyle_ congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured
his curiosity, by facilitating his access. _Shakespeare_ had no such
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; so many, that he who considers them
is inclined to think that he sees enterprise and perseverance
predominating over all external agency, and bidding