welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country
unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The
study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out
upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of
Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction,
has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only
the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of
Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impression; he that
wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of looking round
for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility,
by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation
of writings, to unskilful curiosity.

Our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is
reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were
read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have
followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not
held the thread of the story in their hands.

The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in
his time accessible and familliar. The fable of "As You Like It",
which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little
pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of
Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek
in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English histories he took from English chronicles and English
ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen