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 ought 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 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 satis