Let him be answered, that _Addison_ speaks the language of poets, and _Shakespeare_, of men.

We find in _Cato_ innumerable beauties which enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning, but _Othello_ is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius.

_Cato_ affords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of _Cato_, but we think on _Addison_.
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of _Shakespeare_ is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.

Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness.

_Shakespeare_ opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.
It has been much disputed, whether _Shakespeare_ owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and the examples of ancient authours.
There has always prevailed a tradition, that _Shakespeare_ wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages.