Denham “On Mr. Abraham Cowley,” Poems, 1671, p. 90:
Old Mother Wit and Nature gave
Shakespear and Fletcher all they have.
Milton. L'Allegro, 134.
Dryden. Essay of Dramatic Poesy: see p. [160].
some one else. Edward Young, the author of Night Thoughts, in his Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759, p. 31.
[168]. Hales of Eton. See p. [8].
Fuller,—Worthies of England, 1662, “Warwickshire,” p. 126: “Indeed his Learning was very little, so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any Lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the Earth, so nature it self was all the art which was used upon him.” The concluding phrase of Farmer's quotation is taken from an earlier portion of Fuller's description: “William Shakespeare ... in whom three eminent Poets may seem in some sort to be compounded, 1. Martial ... 2. Ovid ... 3. Plautus, who was an exact comedian, yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare (if alive) would confess himself.”
untutored lines. Dedication of the Rape of Lucrece.
Mr. Glldon. “Hence perhaps the ill-starr'd rage between this critick and his elder brother, John Dennis, so pathetically lamented in the Dunciad. Whilst the former was persuaded that ‘the man who doubts [pg 329] of the learning of Shakespeare hath none of his own,’ the latter, above regarding the attack in his private capacity, declares with great patriotick vehemence that ‘he who allows Shakespeare had learning, and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory of Great Britain.’ Dennis was expelled his college for attempting to stab a man in the dark: Pope would have been glad of this anecdote” (Farmer). Farmer supplied the details in a letter to Isaac Reed dated Jan. 28, 1794: see the European Magazine, June, 1794, pp. 412-3.