Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/48

36 The contet about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analye the mind, to trace the paions to their ources, to unfold the eminal principles of vice and virtue, or ound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All thoe enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fahionable tudy, have been made ometimes with nice dicernment, but often with idle ubtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was atisfied, exhibited only the uperficial appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the caues, and were formed for uch as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. Mankind was not then to be tudied in the cloet; he that would know the world, was under the neceity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he could in its buines and amuements.

Boyle congratulated himelf upon his high birth, becaue it favoured his curioity, by facilitating his acces. Shakepeare had no uch advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. Many works of genius and learning have been performed in tates of life that appear very little favourable to thought or to enquiry; o many, that he who coniders them is inclined to think that he ees enterprize and pereverance predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and hindrance vanih before them. The genius of Shakepeare was not to be depreed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow converation to which men in want are inevitably demned;