Excerpt: ...at least as well written by Shakespeare." Fuller, a diligent and equal searcher after truth and quibbles, declares positively that "his learning was very little, -Nature was all the Art used upon him, as he himself, if alive, would confess." And may we not say he did confess it, when he apologized for his untutored lines to his noble patron the Earl of Southampton?-this list of witnesses might be easily enlarged; but I flatter myself, I shall stand in no need of such evidence. One of the first and most vehement ...
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Excerpt: ...at least as well written by Shakespeare." Fuller, a diligent and equal searcher after truth and quibbles, declares positively that "his learning was very little, -Nature was all the Art used upon him, as he himself, if alive, would confess." And may we not say he did confess it, when he apologized for his untutored lines to his noble patron the Earl of Southampton?-this list of witnesses might be easily enlarged; but I flatter myself, I shall stand in no need of such evidence. One of the first and most vehement assertors of the learning of Shakespeare was the Editor of his Poems, the well-known Mr. Gildon; and his steps were most punctually taken by a subsequent labourer in the same department, Dr. Sewel. 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 disquisition, and endeavoured to persuade himself that Shakespeare's acquaintance with the Ancients might be actually proved by the same medium as Jonson's. Mr. Theobald is "very unwilling to allow him so poor a scholar as many have laboured to represent him"; and yet is "cautious of declaring too positively on the other side of the question." Dr. Warburton hath exposed the weakness of some arguments from suspected imitations; and yet offers others, which, I doubt not, he could as easily have refuted. pg 169 Mr. Upton wonders "with what kind of reasoning any one could be so far imposed upon, as to imagine that Shakespeare had no learning"; and lashes with much zeal and satisfaction "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 shew why, And tell what Rule he did it by. How would the old Bard have been...
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