ged; but I flatter myself, I shall stand in no need of such
evidence.

One of the first and most vehement assertors of the learning of
Shakespeare was the Editor of his Poems, the well-known Mr. Gildon; and
his steps were most punctually taken by a subsequent labourer in the same
department, Dr. Sewel.

Mr. Pope supposed "little ground for the common opinion of his want of
learning": once indeed he made a proper distinction between _learning_ and
_languages_, as I would be understood to do in my Title-page; but
unfortunately he forgot it in the course of his disquisition, and
endeavoured to persuade himself that Shakespeare's acquaintance with the
Ancients might be actually proved by the same medium as Jonson's.

Mr. Theobald is "very unwilling to allow him so poor a scholar as many
have laboured to represent him"; and yet is "cautious of declaring too
positively on the other side of the question."

Dr. Warburton hath exposed the weakness of some arguments from _suspected_
imitations; and yet offers others, which, I doubt not, he could as easily
have refuted.

Mr. Upton wonders "with what kind of reasoning any one could be so far
imposed upon, as to imagine that Shakespeare had no learning"; and lashes
with much zeal and satisfaction "the pride and pertness of dunces, who,
under such a name, would gladly shelter their own idleness and ignorance."

He, like the learned Knight, at every anomaly in grammar or metre,

Hath hard words ready to shew why,
And tell what _Rule_ he did it by.

How would the old Bard have been astonished to have found that he had very
skilfully given the _trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic_, COMMONLY called
the _ithyphallic_ measure, to the Witches in _Macbeth_! and that now and
then a halting Verse afforded a most beautiful instance of the _Pes
proceleusmaticus_!

"But," continues Mr. Upton, "it was a learned age; Roger Ascham assures us
that Queen Elizabeth read more Greek every day, than some _Dignitaries_ of
the Church did Latin in a whole week." This appears very probable; and a
pleasant proof it is of the general learning of the times, and of
Shakespeare in particular. I wonder he did not corroborate it with an
extract from her injunctions to her Clergy, that "such as were but _mean
Readers_ should peruse over before, once or twice, the Chapters and
Homilies, to the intent they might read to the better understanding of the
people."

Dr. Grey declares that Shakespeare's