Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/40

28 reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been uccesfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Acham. Greek was now taught to boys in the principal chools; and thoe who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanih poets. But literature was yet confined to profeed cholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was gros and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplihment till valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened to literary curioity, being yet unacquainted with the true tate of things, knows not how to judge of that which is propoed as its reemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childih credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The tudy of thoe who then apired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feated on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no tate of the inipidity 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 impreion; he that wrote for uch an audience was under the neceity of looking round for trange events