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Poets are always afraid of Envy; but sure they have as much reason to be afraid of Admiration. They are the Scylla and Charybdis of Authors; those who escape one, often fall by the other. Pessimum genus inimicorum Laudantes, says Tacitus : and Virgil desires to wear a charm against those who praise a Poet without rule or reason.

—-Si ultra placitum laudarit, baccare frontem
Cingito, ne Vati noceat—-.

But however this contention might be carried on by the Partizans on either side, I cannot help thinking these two great Poets were good friends, and lived on amicable terms and in offices of society with each other. It is an acknowledged fact, that Ben Johnson was introduced upon the Stage, and his first works encouraged, by Shakespear. And after his death, that Author writes To the memory of
his beloved Mr.
William Shakespear, which shows as if the friendship had continued thro’ life. I cannot for my own part find any thing Invidious or Sparing in those verses, but wonder Mr. Dryden was of that opinion. He exalts him not only above all his Contemporaries, but above Chaucer and Spenser, whom he will not allow to be great enough to be rank’d with him; and challenges the names of Sophocles, Euripides, and AEschylus, nay all Greece and Rome at once, to equal him: And (which is very particular) expressly vindicates him from the imputation of wanting Art, not enduring that all his excellencies shou’d be attributed to Nature. It is remarkable too, that the praise he gives him in his Discoveries seems to proceed from a personal kindness ; he tells us that he lov’d the man, as well as honoured his memory; celebrates the honesty, openness, and frankness of his temper; and only distinguishes, as he reasonably ought, between the real merit of the Author, and the silly and derogatory applauses of the Players. Ben Johnson might indeed be sparing in his Commendations (tho’ certainly he is not so in this instance) partly from his own nature, and partly from judgment. For men of judgment think they do any man more service in praising him justly, than lavishly. I say, I would fain believe they were Friends, tho’ the violence and ill-breeding of their Followers and Flatterers were enough to give rise to the contrary report. I would hope that it may be with Parties, both in Wit and State, as with those Monsters described by the Poets; and that their Heads at least may have something humane, tho’ their Bodies and Tails are wild beasts and serpents.

As I believe that what I have mentioned gave rise to the opinion of Shakespear‘s want of learning; so what has continued it down to us may have been the many blunders and illiteracies of the first Publishers of his works. In these Editions their ignorance shines almost in every page; nothing is more common than Actus tertia, Exit Omnes, Enter three Witches solus. Their French is as bad as their Latin, both in construction and spelling: Their very Welsh is false. Nothing is more likely than that those palpable blunders of Hector‘s quoting Aristotle, with others of that gross kind, sprung from the same root: It not being at all credible that these could be the errors of any man who had the least tincture of a School, or the least conversation with such as had. Ben Johnson (whom they will not think partial to him) allows him at least to have had some Latin ; which is utterly inconsistent with mistakes like these. Nay the constant blunders in proper names of persons and places, are such as must have proceeded from a man who had not so much as read any history, in any language: so could not be Shakespear‘s.