eign 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 then 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 offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unskilful
curiosity.

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is
reasonable to suppose that he chose the most popular, such as were read by
many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him
through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the
story in their hands.

The stories which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time
accessible and familiar. The fable of _As you like it_, which is supposed
to be copied from Chaucer's _Gamelyn_, was a little pamphlet of those
times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of _Hamlet_ in plain English
prose, which the criticks have now to seek in _Saxo Grammaticus_.

His English histories he took from English chronicles and English ballads;
and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by versions,
th