Argument of his never having read them.” I shall leave it to the
Determination of my Learned Readers, from the numerous Passages,
which I have occasionally quoted in my Notes, in which our Poet
seems closely to have imitated the Classics, whether Mr. _Rowe_’s
Assertion be so absolutely to be depended on. The Result of the
Controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our Author’s
Honour: how happily he could imitate them, if that Point be allow’d;
or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing any thing
to Imitation.

Tho’ I should be very unwilling to allow _Shakespeare_ so poor a
Scholar, as Many have labour’d to represent him, yet I shall be
very cautious of declaring too positively on the other side of the
Question: that is, with regard to my Opinion of his Knowledge in the
dead Languages. And therefore the Passages, that I occasionally
quote from the _Classics_, shall not be urged as Proofs that he
knowingly imitated those Originals; but brought to shew how happily
he has express’d himself upon the same Topicks. A very learned
Critick of our own Nation has declar’d, that a Sameness of Thought
and Sameness of Expression too, in Two Writers of a different Age,
can hardly happen, without a violent Suspicion of the Latter copying
from his Predecessor. I shall not therefore run any great Risque
of a Censure, tho’ I should venture to hint, that the Resemblance,
in Thought and Expression, of our Author and an Ancient (which
we should allow to be Imitation in One, whose Learning was not
question’d) may sometimes take its Rise from Strength of Memory, and
those Impressions which he ow’d to the School. And if we may allow a
Possibility of This, considering that, when he quitted the School,
he gave into his Father’s Profession and way of Living, and had,
’tis likely, but a slender Library of Classical Learning; and