During the fifty years between Pope's Preface and Johnson's, the
controversy continued intermittently without either party gaining ground.
In the Preface to the supplementary volume to Pope's edition--which is a
reprint of Gildon's supplementary volume to Rowe's--Sewell declared he
found evident marks through all Shakespeare's writings of knowledge of the
Latin tongue. Theobald, who was bound to go astray when he ventured beyond
the collation of texts, was ready to believe that similarity of idea in
Shakespeare and the classics was due to direct borrowing. He had, however,
the friendly advice of Warburton to make him beware of the secret
satisfaction of pointing out a classical original. In its earlier form his
very unequal Preface had contained the acute observation that the texture
of Shakespeare's phrases indicated better than his vocabulary the extent
of his knowledge of Latin. The style was submitted as "the truest
criterion to determine this long agitated question," and the conclusion
was implied that Shakespeare could not have been familiar with the
classics. But this interesting passage was omitted in the second edition,
perhaps because it was inconsistent with a less decided utterance
elsewhere in the Preface, but more probably because it had been supplied
by Warburton. In his earlier days, before he had met Warburton, he had
been emphatic. In the Preface to his version of _Richard II._ he had tried
to do Shakespeare "some justice upon the points of his learning and
acquaintance with the Ancients." He had said that _Timon of Athens_ and
_Troilus and Cressida_ left it without dispute or exception that
Shakespeare was no inconsiderable master of the Greek story; he dared be
positive that the latter play was founded directly upon Homer; he held
that Shakespeare must have known Aeschylus, Lucian, and Plutarch in the
Greek; and he claimed that he could, "with the greatest ease imaginable,"
produce above five hundred passages from the three Roman plays to prove
Shakespeare's intimacy with the Latin classics. When he came under the
influence of Warburton he lost his assurance. He was then "very cautious
of declaring too positively" on either side of the question; but he was
loath to give up his belief that Shakespeare knew the classics at first
hand. Warburton himself did not figure creditably in the controversy. He
might ridicule the discoveries of other critics, but his vanity often
allured him to displays of learning