events and fabulous tranſactions, and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unſkilſul curioſity.
Our author’s plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is reaſonable to ſuppoſe, that he choſe the moſt popular, ſuch as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the ſtory in their hands.
The ſtories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time acceſſible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is ſuppoſed to be copied from Chaucer’s Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of thoſe times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain Engliſh proſe which the criticks have now to ſeek in Saxo Grammaticus.
His Engliſh hiſtories he took from Engliſh chronicles and Engliſh ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by verſions, they ſupplied him with new ſubjects; he dilated ſome of Plucarch’s lives into plays, when they had been tranſlated by North.
His plots, whether hiſtorical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more eaſily caught than by ſentiment or argumentation; and ſuch is the power of the marvellous, even over thoſe who deſpiſe it, that
every
