as absurd as theirs. No indecision
troubled Upton or Zachary Grey. They saw in Shakespeare a man of profound
reading, one who might well have worn out his eyes in poring over classic
tomes. They clutched at anything to show his deliberate imitation of the
Ancients. There could be no better instance of the ingenious folly of this
type of criticism than the passage in the _Notes on Shakespeare_, where
Grey argues from Gloucester's words in _Richard III._, "Go you before and
I will follow you," that Shakespeare knew, and was indebted to, Terence's
_Andria_. About the same time Peter Whalley, the editor of Ben Jonson,
brought out his _Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare_ (1748), the
first formal treatise devoted directly to the subject of controversy.
Therein it is claimed that Shakespeare knew Latin well enough to have
acquired in it a taste and elegance of judgment, and was more indebted to
the Ancients than was commonly imagined. On the whole, however, Whalley's
attitude was more reasonable than that of Upton or Grey, for he admitted
that his list of parallel passages might not settle the point at issue.

After such a display of misapplied learning it is refreshing to meet with
the common sense of one who was a greater scholar than any of these
pedants. Johnson has less difficulty in giving his opinion on the extent
of Shakespeare's learning than in discovering the reasons of the
controversy. The evidence of Shakespeare's contemporary, he says, ought to
decide the question unless some testimony of equal force can be opposed,
and such testimony he refuses to find in the collections of the Uptons and
Greys. It is especially remarkable that Johnson, who is not considered to
have been strong in research, should be the first to state that
Shakespeare used North's translation of Plutarch. He is the first also to
point out that there was an English translation of the play on which the
_Comedy of Errors_ was founded,(17) and the first to show that it was not
necessary to go back to the _Tale of Gamelyn_ for the story of _As you
like it_. There is no evidence how he came by this knowledge. The casual
and allusive manner in which he advances his information would seem to
show that it was not of his own getting. He may have been indebted for it
to the scholar who two years later put an end to the controversy. The
edition of Shakespeare did not appear till October, 1765, and early in
that year Johnson had spent his "joyous eveni