Besides, _Wit_ lying mostly in the Assemblage of _Ideas_, and in the
putting Those together with Quickness and Variety, wherein can be
found any Resemblance, or Congruity, to make up pleasant Pictures,
and agreeable Visions in the Fancy; the Writer, who aims at Wit,
must of course range far and wide for Materials. Now, the Age, in
which _Shakespeare_ liv’d, having, above all others, a wonderful
Affection to appear Learned, They declined vulgar Images, such as
are immediately fetch’d from Nature, and rang’d thro’ the Circle
of the Sciences to fetch their Ideas from thence. But as the
Resemblances of such Ideas to the Subject must necessarily lie very
much out of the common Way, and every piece of Wit appear a Riddle
to the Vulgar; This, that should have taught them the forced,
quaint, unnatural Tract they were in, (and induce them to follow a
more natural One,) was the very Thing that kept them attach’d to it.
The ostentatious Affectation of abstruse Learning, peculiar to that
Time, the Love that Men naturally have to every Thing that looks
like Mystery, fixed them down to this Habit of Obscurity. Thus
became the Poetry of DONNE (tho’ the wittiest Man of that Age,)
nothing but a continued Heap of Riddles. And our _Shakespeare_, with
all his easy Nature about him, for want of the Knowledge of the true
Rules of Art, falls frequently into this vicious Manner.

The third Species of _Obscurities_, which deform our Author, as
the Effects of his own Genius and Character, are Those that proceed
from his peculiar Manner of _Thinking_, and as peculiar a Manner of
_cloathing_ those _Thoughts_. With regard to his _Thinking_, it is
certain, that he had a general Knowledge of all the Sciences: But
his Acquaintance was rather That of a Traveller, than a Native.
Nothing in Philosophy was unknown to him; but every Thing in it had
the Grace and Force of Novelty. And as Novelty is one main Source of