Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them.

_Shakespeare_, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his ideals, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he, like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better, as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply instructed.
There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds.

_Shakespeare_ must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive.

Other writers borrow their characters from preceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same.

Our authour had both matter and form to provide; for except the characters of _Chaucer_, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in _English_, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which shewed life in its native colours.
The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced.