ventured to point out a few of those instances in which our great
dramatist has stooped to plagiarize. That he must have done so, at least
occasionally, is a matter of course, as no voluminous writings were ever
given to the world that were not the result of study as well as original
thought, for genius must ever be corrected by judgment, and what is
judgment but the child of experience and study? Observation alone can
tell us, that man is an imitative animal, and philosophy teaches us that
his ideas are not innate; he must borrow them at first in a simple form
from those around him, and though by the association of these ideas, and
the gradual extension and improvement of them, he may eventually
generate new ones, yet some traces cannot but remain of what was
originally lodged in the mind, and will come into play as occasion may
call them forth. Shakspeare was a perfect master of human nature, but he
was a master of our language as well; he was indeed one of those who
have improved it, but he could never have himself arrived at the degree
of perfection in which he found it, had he not derived assistance from
others, and made himself intimately acquainted with our purest national
works of talent. Thus, he could never have been so ignorant as he is
said to have been of English literature.

Little is known of Shakspeare's earlier years, except that he was sent
to the free school at Stratford, where he acquired the rudiments of the
learned languages; that he was never a distinguished classic is certain,
but it is equally certain that he must have been acquainted with the
Greek dramatists by the use of translations, though he may not have had
scholarship enough to study them in the original. So many parallel
passages might be drawn from this source, that the task would be an
endless one; besides the fact is so well known and admitted, that it
would be unnecessary. "We find him," says Mr. Pope, "very knowing in all
the customs of antiquity." In _Julius Caesar, Coriolanus_, and other