d,

Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scaea, Troian,
And Antenorides.

But had he looked into the _Troy boke_ of Lydgate, instead of puzzling
himself with Dares Phrygius, he would have found the horrid demolition to
have been neither the work of Shakespeare nor his Editors.

Therto his cyte | compassed enuyrowne
Hadde gates VI to entre into the towne:
The firste of all | and strengest eke with all,
Largest also | and moste pryncypall,
Of myghty byldyng | alone pereless,
Was by the kynge called | Dardanydes;
And in storye | lyke as it is founde,
Tymbria | was named the seconde;
And the thyrde | called Helyas,
The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas;
The fyfthe Trojana, | the syxth Anthonydes,
Stronge and myghty | both in werre and pes.--Lond. empr. by R.
Pynson, 1513. Fol. B. 2. Ch. 11.

Our excellent friend Mr. Hurd hath born a noble testimony on our side of
the question. "Shakespeare," says this true Critick, "owed the felicity of
freedom from the bondage of classical superstition to the _want_ of what
is called the _advantage_ of a learned Education.--This, as well as a vast
superiority of Genius, hath contributed to lift this astonishing man to
the glory of being esteemed the most original _thinker_ and _speaker_,
since the times of Homer." And hence indisputably the amazing Variety of
Style and Manner, unknown to all other Writers: an argument of _itself_
sufficient to emancipate Shakespeare from the supposition of a _Classical
training_. Yet, to be honest, _one_ Imitation is _fastened_ on our Poet:
which hath been insisted upon likewise by Mr. Upton and Mr. Whalley. You
remember it in the famous Speech of Claudio in _Measure for Measure_:

Ay, but to die and go we know not where! &c.

Most certainly the Ideas of a "Spirit bathing in fiery floods," of
residing "in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," or of being
"imprisoned in the viewless winds," are not _original_ in our Author; but
I am not sure that they came from the _Platonick Hell_ of Virgil. The
Monks also had their hot and their cold Hell, "The fyrste is fyre that
ever brenneth, and never gyveth lighte," says an old Homily:--"The seconde
is passyng colde, that yf a grete hylle of fyre were casten therin, it
sholde torne to yce." One of their Legends, well remembered in the time of
Shakespeare, gives us a Dialogue between a Bishop and a Soul tormented in
a piece of