t properly Defects, but
Superfoetations: and arise not from want of learning or reading, but from
want of thinking or judging: or rather (to be more just to our Author)
from a compliance to those wants in others. As to a wrong choice of the
subject, a wrong conduct of the incidents, false thoughts, forc'd
expressions, &c. if these are not to be ascrib'd to the foresaid
accidental reasons, they must be charg'd upon the Poet himself, and there
is no help for it. But I think the two Disadvantages which I have
mentioned (to be obliged to please the lowest of the people, and to keep
the worst of company), if the consideration be extended as far as it
reasonably may, will appear sufficient to mis-lead and depress the
greatest Genius upon earth. Nay the more modesty with which such a one is
endued, the more he is in danger of submitting and conforming to others,
against his own better judgment.

But as to his _Want of Learning_, it may be necessary to say something
more: There is certainly a vast difference between _Learning_ and
_Languages_. How far he was ignorant of the latter, I cannot determine;
but 'tis plain he had much Reading at least, if they will not call it
Learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man has Knowledge, whether he
has it from one language or from another. Nothing is more evident than
that he had a taste of natural Philosophy, Mechanicks, ancient and modern
History, Poetical learning, and Mythology: We find him very knowing in the
customs, rites, and manners of Antiquity. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius
Caesar_, not only the Spirit, but Manners, of the _Romans_ are exactly
drawn; and still a nicer distinction is shewn, between the manners of the
_Romans_ in the time of the former and of the latter. His reading in the
ancient Historians is no less conspicuous, in many references to
particular passages: and the speeches copy'd from _Plutarch_ in
_Coriolanus_ may, I think, as well be made an instance of his learning, as
those copy'd from _Cicero_ in _Catiline_, of _Ben Johnson_'s. The manners
of other nations in general, the _Egyptians_, _Venetians_, _French_, &c.,
are drawn with equal propriety. Whatever object of nature, or branch of
science, he either speaks of or describes, it is always with competent, if
not extensive knowledge: his descriptions are still exact; all his
metaphors appropriated, and remarkably drawn from the true nature and
inherent qualities of each subject. When he treats of Ethic or Pol