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 considering what a Number of Translations, Romances, and Legends, started about his Time, and a little before; (most of which, ’tis very evident, he read;) I think, it may easily be reconcil’d, why he rather schemed his _Plots_ and _Charaters_ from these more latter Informations, than went back to those Fountains, for which he might entertain a sincere Veneration, but to which he could not have so ready a Recourse. In touching on another Part of his Learning, as it related to the Knowledge of _History_ and _Books_, I shall advance something, that, at first sight, will very much wear the Appearance of a Paradox. For I shall find it no hard Matter to prove, that from the grossest Blunders in History, we are not to infer his real Ignorance of it: Nor from a greater Use of _Latin_ Words, than ever any other _English_ Author used, must we infer his Knowledge of that Language.