orse or better
for the circumstances of the author, yet, as there is always a silent
reference of human works to human abilities, and as the inquiry, how far
man may extend his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is
of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular
performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments, as
well as to survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to
original powers, and how much to casual and adventitious help. The
palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious
habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who
could forbear to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they
were built without the use of iron?

The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to
emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted
hither in the reign of Henry the eighth; and the learned languages had
been successfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and More; by Pole,
Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.
Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who
united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian
and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to professed
scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was gross and
dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still
valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened
to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of
things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its
resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always
welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country
unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of
those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon
adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was
the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no
taste of the insipidity of truth. A play, which imitated only the common
occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy
of Warwick, have made little impression; he that wrote for such an
audience was under the necessity of looking round for strange events and
fabulous transactions; and that incredibility, by which maturer
knowledge is