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Shakspeare's plays both these last languages are plentifully scattered: but then, we are told, they might be impertinent additions of the players. Undoubtedly they might: but there they are, and, perhaps, few of the players had much more learning than Shakspeare.

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Mr. Farmer himself will allow that Shakspeare began to learn Latin: I will allow that his studies lay in English but why insist that he neither made any progress at school; nor improved his acquisitions there? The general encomiums of Suckling, Denham, Milton, &c. on his native genius 29, prove nothing; and Ben Jonson's celebrated charge of Shakspeare's small Latin, and less Greek 3o, seems absolutely to decide that he had some knowledge of both; and if we may judge by our own time, a man, who has any Greek, is seldom without a very competent share of Latin; and yet such a man is very likely to study Plutarch in English, and to read translations of Ovid.

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THE LIFE

OF

TERENCE,

TRANSLATED FROM SUETONIUS.'

PUBLIUS TERENTIUS AFER was born at Carthage, and was a slave of Terentius Lucanus, a Roman Senator; who, perceiving him to have an excellent understanding and a great deal of wit, not only bestowed on him a liberal education, but gave him his freedom in the very early part of his life. Some writers are of opinion that he was taken prisoner in battle; but Fenestella3 proves this to be impossible, since Terence was born after the second Punic war, and died before the commencement of the third. But even supposing that he had been taken by the Numidians, or Getulians, he could not have fallen into the hands of a Roman commander, since there was little or no communication between the Romans and Africans till after the entire destruction of Carthage.

Our Poet was beloved and much esteemed by noblemen of the first rank in the Roman commonwealth; and lived in a state of great intimacy with Scipio Africanus, and C. Lælius, to whom the beauty of his person also is supposed to have recommended him: which Fenestella lays to his charge, asserting that Terence was older than either of them'. Corn. Nepos,

B

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