This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating and improving it.
But the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own genius.

He found the _English_ stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other might be carried.

Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood.

_Shakespeare_ may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height.
By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled.

_Rowe_ is of opinion, that _perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for ought I know_, says he, _the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, were the best._ But the power of nature is only the power of using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity supplies.