[132]. Every man's performances, etc. Cf. Johnson, Life of Dryden: “To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them.”
Nations have their infancy, etc. Cf. Johnson's Dedication to Mrs. Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated, 1753, pp. viii, ix. See note, p. [175].
[133]. As you like it. Theobald, Upton, and Zachary Grey were satisfied that As you like it was founded on “the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn in Chaucer.” But Johnson knows that the immediate source of the play is Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie. The presence of the Tale of Gamelyn in several MSS. of the Canterbury Tales accounted for its erroneous ascription to Chaucer. It was still in MS. in Shakespeare's days. Cf. Farmer's Essay, p. [178].
old Mr. Cibber,—Colley Cibber (1671-1757), actor and poet-laureate.
English ballads. Johnson refers to the ballad of King Leire and his Three Daughters. But the ballad is of later date than the play. Cf. p. [178].
[134]. Voltaire, Du Théâtre anglais, vol. 61, p. 366 (ed. 1785). Cf. Lettres philosophiques, Sur la Tragédie, ad fin., and Le Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. xxxiv.
Similar comparisons of Shakespeare and Addison occur in William Guthrie's Essay upon English Tragedy (1747) and Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759). The former may have been inspired by Johnson's conversation. Cf. also Warburton's comparison incorporated in Theobald's preface of 1733.
[135]. A correct and regular writer, etc. Cf. the comparison of Dryden and Pope in Johnson's life of the latter: “Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe and levelled by the roller.” The “garden-and-forest” comparison had already appeared, in a versified form, in the Connoisseur, No. 125 (17th June, 1756). Cf. also Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 59, “Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.”
[135]. small Latin and less Greek. Ben Jonson's poem To the Memory of Mr. William Shakespeare, l. 31. The first edition of the Preface read by mistake no Greek. Cf. Kenrick's Review, 1765, p. 106, the London Magazine, October, 1765, p. 536, and Farmer's Essay, p. [166], note.
[136]. Go before, I'll follow. This remark was made by Zachary Grey in his Notes on Shakespeare, vol. ii., p. 53. He says that “Go you before and I will follow you,” Richard III., i. 1. 144, is “in imitation of Terence, ‘I prae, sequar.’ Terentii Andr., i., l. 144.”