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FRASER'S MAGAZINE
FOR
TOWN AND COUNTRY.
No. GXVII. SEPTEMBER, 1839. Vol. XX.
dr. maofnn to oliver yorke, esq., on " farmer's essay on shakspeare."
Dear Sir,—As there appears to be a revived zeal for commentatorship on
Shakspeare, I may be perhaps allowed to roll my tub among the rest ; and the
first service I wish to perform is to rid, or at least to give some reasons for ridding,
all future editors of a superfluous swelling in the shape of Dr. Farmer's Essay
on the Learning of Shakspeare, which has long been a regular encumbrance on
the variorum editions. In the subjoined letter, if you will be so good as to print
it, your readers, who I iiope are in number equal to the whole reading public
of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Colonies,
—" From sunny Indus to the Pole,—
will find my reasons for not thinking highly of the Master of Emmanuel, or his
Shakspearian labours. Tiie critical clique to which he belonged was peculiarly
absurd ; and we have only to cast a glance upon his face, as preserved in an en¬
graving by Harding, to see that the feeble smirk of fat-headed and scornful block-
hcadism self-satisfied, with that peddling pedantry of the smallest order, which
entitled its possessor to look down with patronizing pity on the loftiest genius, is its
prevailing feature. Perhaps somebody may think it worth while to contradict this
assertion by a host of collegiate opinions in his favour, backed by a list of super¬
lative panegyrics on his learning, and excellence of wisdom and wit, culled from
various quarters; and I shall not dispute their justice, or undervalue their merit.
I am only dealing with the Essay before me ; and with his picture, as I find it in the
splendid Cracherode copy of Steevens (a presentation one) in the British Museum.
Let me ask the favour of a couple of dozen lines before I close my note ;
and they are intended to say that Charles Knight's Shakspeare (or as he thinks
proper, " after much consideration," to spell the word Shakspere—he might
as well spell his own name Night) is, in its conception and management,
one of the most valuable presents made, not merely to Shakspearian, but to
general antiquarian literature. I know that there are many more famous,
elaborate, deeply pondered, and technical repertories of antiquarian lore. I
know also that there have been criticisms of highe. pretence, and, in soinr
instances, of far higher genius, upon these illustrious dramas, than what we have
in the brief notes which he is publishing ; but taking the combination of graphie
vol. -XX. no. cxvii. s
254
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[September,
exhibition by admirably executed woodcuts (in most cases, worth a wagonload
of comment) of objects now to be traced by poring research, but so familiar as
to be made matter of trite allusion in the days of Elizabeth, with fairly-digested
and well-condensed scholia, meeting all the ordinary difficulties, and explaining
the ordinary puzzles of the sadly mangled text, I do not know where to find a
book in wbich poetry is so aided by antiquarian knowledge and pictorial skill.
All this, however, will not allow me to say that the text still does not want a
revision much more searchingly careful than that which Ilemmings and Condell
gave it, or that svith which the successors of these gentlemen have been satisfied.
Permit me to subscribe myself, with great respect,
Dear Mr. Yohke,
faithfully yours,
William Maginn.
[It gives us great pleasure to print Dr. Maginn's letter ; but we are not
answerable for any of its statements or arguments. We must divide his com¬
munication into two parts. " Let us ask the favour," to use his own phrase,
of saying that Tyas's Illustrated Shakspeare is a highly creditable publication,
containing occasionally excellent observations, handsomely illustrated, and what
in those days ought be not forgotten, when " Exchequer-bills are such a price,"
as the song says, marvellously cheap.—O. Y.]
dr. farmer's essay on the learning of shakspeare
considered.
by william magink, esq., ll.d.
I have always considered Dr. Far¬
mer's " celebrated Essay," as Steevens
calls it, on the learning of Shakspeare,
as a piece of pedantic impertinence,
not paralleled in literature. The
very style and manner in which this
third or fourth-rate scholar, undistin¬
guished by any work of reputation
whatever, speaks of " the old bard,"
as he usually entitles Shakspeare, are
as disgusting as the smirking com¬
placency with which he regards his
own petty labours. " The rage of
parallelisms," he says in his preface,
" is almost over ; and, in truth, nothing
can be more absurd. This was stolen
from one classic, that from another;
and, bad I not stepped in to his rescue,
poor Shakspeare had been stripped as
naked of ornament as when he first
held horses at the door of the play¬
house." His having ever held horses
at the door of the playhouse is an idle
fiction, which the slightest consideration
bestowed on the career of his fortunes
in London would suffice to dispel ;
but it is introduced here to serve the
purpose of suggesting to Farmer's
readers that the original condition of
Shakspeare was menial, and therefore
that it is improbable he had received
an education fitting him to acquire a
knowledge of ancient or foreign learn¬
ing.
" Had I not come to his rescue," says
Dr. Farmer, " poor Shakspeare would
have been stripped bare,"&c. Passing
the insolence and self-conceit of this
assertion, may we not ask from whom
was Shakspeare to be rescued? From
some zealous commentators, it appears,
who indulged in a rage for collecting
parallelisms, i.e. passages in the clas¬
sical authors, in which they thought
they found resemblances to passages in
Shakspeare. In this task they some¬
times were fanciful, and saw likenesses
where none existed, but not one of them
accused Shakspeare of theft. There is
a vast difference between a thief and
an imitator. Who has ever accused
Milton or Virgil of stealing from
Homer? Who is so insane as to think
that Paradise Lost or tire .^neid stand
in need of " a rescue" from the an-
notators who point out the passages of
the Iliad, or other poems, from which
many of the most beautiful and majestic
ornaments of the more modern great
epics are derived ? Nobody, of the
most common sense, can imagine that
illustrations of this kind strip the poets
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
255
naked, or call for the assistance of such
rescuers as Farmer.
Elsewhere he says,—
" These critics " (those who maintain
Shakspearo's claims on learning), " and
many others, their coadjutors, hare sup¬
posed themselves able to trace Shak¬
speare in the writings of the ancients, and
have sometimes persuaded us of their
own learning, whatever became of their
author's. I'lagiarisms have been dis¬
covered in every natural description, and
every moral sentiment. Indeed, by the
kind assistance of the various Excerpta,
Sententiœ, and Flores, this business may
ho effected with very little expense of
time or sagacity ; as Addison hath de¬
monstrated in his comment on Chevy
Chase, and Wagstaff on Tom Thumb ; and
I myself will engage to give you quota¬
tions from the elder English writers (for,
to own the truth, I was once idle enough
to collect such), which shall carry with
them at least an equal degree of similarity.
But there can he no occasion of wasting
any future time in this department : the
world is now in possession of marks of
imitation."
No doubt the world does possess the
work, and equally is it doubtless that
the world has totally forgotten the boon.
A more worthless piece of trumpery cri¬
ticism, empty parade, and shallow read¬
ing, does not exist than this extolled
composition of Bp. Hurd, and therefore
it is justly entitled to the laboriously fine
compliment here p.aid it by Farmer (n).
It would, indeed, be wandering fat-
away from the question which I intend
to discuss, if I were to enter upon the
distinction between imitation and pla¬
giarism, or attempt to define the line
at which one begins and the other
ends ; but it is not going out of the
way to pronounce the sentences just
quoted very absurd. Excerpta, Sen-
tcntia, Flores, will give but little
assistance in tracing out imitations ;
for these compilations are in general
nothing more than collections of com¬
monplaces, which suggest themselves
to reflective or poetic minds in all
ages and countries pretty much in the
same manner. We must adopt a very
different course of reading if we wish
to shew, from Úiepeculiafilies of thought
or expression which are to be found
in one poet, whether he has oi- has not
suggested the phrase or the idea to a
successor. When this is judiciously
done, it reflects honour on the taste
and the reading of the critic. If the
execution of such task be ridiculous, as
sometimes it will be, the ridicule surely
ought to attach to the commentator, not
to the author. Shakspeare is not to be
esteemed unlearned, because Upton has
sometimes been preposterous ; and yet
that is the argument which runs through¬
out this " celebrated Essay."
Addison's critique on Chevp Chase,
whether intended as jest or earnest, is
in neither department very successful.
The ballad poeti-y of England was,
in his time, matter of mock to " the
town," the sparkish Templar, the wits
of the coffeehouses, and the men of
mode; and those who, like Thomas
Ilearne, applied themselves to the
antiquities of English literature, were
especial butts of scorn. Addison,
deeply imbued with this spirit, deter¬
mined to be patronising at the expense of
the old ballad ; but not being altogether
delivered over to the demon of goût, he
could not refr ain from expressing, now
and then, genuine admiration of the
picturesque touches in Chevy Chase,
for some of which he found resem¬
blances in the battle-poems of an¬
tiquity. Those resemblances are, in
fact, unavoidable; for the poetic in¬
cidents of war, either in action or
passion, are so few and so prominently
striking, that they must occur to every
poet, particularly to those who live
among the scenes of which they sing :
but, on the whole, so little was Addison
qualified to perform the task of judging
of the merits of the subject he selected
for his criticism, that he took as his
text, not the real Chevy Chase of Richard
Sheale, in the time of Henry VI.— that
which stirred the heart of Sir Philip Sid¬
ney as with a trumpet—but a modern
rifaccimcnto, made, in all probability,
not fifty years before Addison was born,
in every respect miserably inferior to
the original, and in which are to be
found these passages and expressions
which excite the merriment of the
jocular. He could not have bestowed
much attention on our ballad lore, and,
consequently, not critically known any
thing of its spirit; for if he had, he
might have found, as well as Ilearne,
that the true ballad was " The Persd
owt of Norlhumberlande."
As for VVagstaff's Tom Thumb, that
is an avowed joke upon Addison's
critique on Chevy Chase, and in many
(a) See Notes at the ppd of this qrliclo.
256
Dr, Farineras Essay on
[September,
parts amusingly executed, to the dis¬
comfiture of the Spectator. It is full
of the then fashionable fooleries about
Bentley ; and the author, being a me¬
dical man, could not avoid having a
fling at brother-doctors : it is now
hardly remembered.* If, instead of
quizzing Addison for his critique on
Chevy Chase, and selecting the old
ballad of Tom Thumb as his theme,
the facetious physician could have
made the Tom Thumb of Fielding,
familiarised to us in Kane O'Hara's
version, the object of his comment,
then, as that renowned drama was
originally written as a parody on
the favourite tragedies of the day, it
would be easy seriously to trace the
remote original of the parodist in the
direct original of the burlesqued tra¬
gedian. If we could prove, for in¬
stance, that Thomson was indebted to
any prior dramatist for
" O Sophonisba ! Sophonisba, O ! "
that writer might claim the correspond¬
ing exclamation in Tom Thumb ;—
" O Huncaraunca ! Huncamunca, O !"
as his original property ; and the simi¬
larity of imitation insinuated by Farmer
might be understood.
But these are not eases in point :
nor would Farmer's own collection of
passages, in which the writers of anti¬
quity might be supposed to supply re¬
semblances to what we find in English
writers, affect the question in the least
degree ; for if by these writers he
means Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Sur¬
rey, Wyatt, Skelton, &c., they were
all men of extensive reading in various
languages, and had ample knowledge
of preceding authors, and sufficient
access for the purpose of borrowing, or
imitating, or stealing, if they pleased.
In making his collection, though Far¬
mer designates it idleness, he might
have been profitably employed ; for he
was a man of extensive and desultory
reading, with the advantage of having
a great library at his service, being
the principal librarian of the University
of Cambridge ;—he was idly employed,
indeed, when he took upon himself
the office of" rescuing" Shakyieare.
There is, however, in his Èssay an
amusing proof that he was practically
acquainted with the art of plagiarism.
• Ex.gr.—" The following Part of this Canto (the old ballad of Tom Thumb) is the
Ilelation of our Hero's being put into a Pudding, and conveyed away in a Tinker's
Budget ; which is designed by our Author to prove, if it is understood literally. That
the greatest Men are subject to Misfortunes. But it is thought hy Dr. B tly to
l)e all Mythology, and to contain the Doctrine of the Transmutation of Metals, and is
designed to shew that all Matter is the same, though differently Modified. He tells
me he intends to publish a distinct Treatise on this Canto; and 1 don't question, but
he '11 manage the Dispute with the same Learning, Conduct, and good Manners, he
has done others, and as Dr. Salmon uses in his corrections of Dr. Sydenham and the
Dispensatory. The next Canto is the story of Tom Thumb's being swallowed by a
Cow, and his Deliverance out of her, which is treated of at large by Giordano Bruno,
in his Spaccio de la Bestia triunfante; which hook, though very scarce, yet a certain
Gentleman, who has it in his possession, has been so obliging as to let every Body
know where to meet with it. After tliis you find him carried oft" by a Raven, and
swallowed by a Giant; and 'tis almost the same story as that of Ganimede and
the Eagle, in Ovid :—
• Now by a Haven of strength.
Away poor Tom was borne.
' Nec mora : percusso mendacibus are pennis
Abripit Iliaden.' "
A Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb. London, 1711. P. 13.
There are some pretty fair jokes in pp. 11-15, 18, &c. Wagstaffe did not know
how near the truth his jest lay, when he attributes the origin of the fahle to anti¬
quity as remote as that of the Druids. P. 5. The conclusion of his pamphlet is
amusing now. " If," continues my bookseller, " you have a mind that it should
turn to advantage with treason or heresy, get censured by the parliament or con¬
vocation, and condemned to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, and you
can't fail having a multitude of readers, by the same reason A notorious rogue has
such a number of followers to the gallows," p. 24. It is now hard to say what is,
or is not, treason. Heresy is not worth sixpence in the hook-market. There is
no convocation practically existing ; the literary hangman, like the schoolmaster,
has gone abroad ; and as for the censure of parliament, since that assembly has
been reformed, it v>-ould not influence the sale of a copy more or less of a two¬
penny tract, or a five-pound folio.
1839.] the Learning of Sliukspeare considered.
257
Sliakspearc, lie informs us, came out of
the hand of Nature, " as some one else
expresses it, like Pallas out of Jove's
head, at full growth, and mature."
Well did he know who this some one
else was, for he quotes elsewhere " the
preface to his" (that some one else's)
" elegant translation of Terence." This
is to be applauded ; for it is one of the
best and most approved tricks of the
plagiary trade to pilfer with an appear¬
ance of candour, which gives the contra¬
bandist all the cred it of the appropriated
passage with those who know not whence
it comes, leaving him at the same time
a loophole of retreat when detected,
by pointing out how he had disclaimed
its originality. But the some one else,
who happened to be George Colman the
elder, was not the kind of person to
submit in silence ; and, accordingly, in
the next edition of his Terence, he
claims his " thunder" as zealously as
Dennis himself. " It is whimsical
enough," he observes, " that this some
one else, whose expression is here quoted
to countenance the general notion of
Shakspeare's want of literature, should
be no other than myself. Mr. Farmer
does not choose to mention where he
met with the expression of some one else ;
and some one else does not choose to
mention where he dropped it." This
is very lofty on the part of Colman.
I do not know that any one has taken
the trouble of seeking where he drop¬
ped it, but an anonymous critic
\_Ed. Variorum, Shakspeare of 1813,
p. 91, vol. ii.] has shewn us where
he found it ; namely, in Dr. Young's
Conjectures on Original Composition.
" An adult genius comes out of Nature's
hands, as Pallas out of Jove's head,
at full growth, and mature. Shak¬
speare's genius was of this kind." It
is excessively diverting to find Farmer
pilfering from Colman, and Colman
claiming the stolen property only to be
convicted that he had himself stolen it
from Young. 1 have noticed this trifle
principally to illustrate the difference
between literary imitation and literary
thieving. To any one acquainted with
classiciil mythology, the idea of com¬
paring original genius st«\ting into the
world at once in full vigour of strength
and beauty, without the tedious process
of infant care and culture, to the God¬
dess of Wisdom bursting full armed
from the brain of Jupiter, might readily
occur. Two people, or two hundred
and fifty-two people, might think of
the same thing ; and yet he who came
second, or two hundred and fifty-
second, be as original as the man who
came first. This would be a case of
coincidence. Ifa verse-maker had seen
the sentence of Young, and turned it
into metre as thus —
As from the forehead of the Olympian
king
Sprang Pallas armed, so full grown
and mature
Adult from Nature's hand does Genius
spring.
No tedious hours of nurture to en¬
dure,
it would be a case of imitation. The
verse-maker has contributed something
in the shape of labour, at least, to the
composition as he exhibits it ; if not
" the vision and the faculty divine,"
yet " the single, double, and the triple
rhymes;" but if we find not merely
the obvious ide.i, but the peculiar
phraseology, as " coming out of Na¬
ture's hand as " Pallas \not Minerva']
out of Jove's [noi Jupiter's] head
as " at full growth and mature;" and
these phrases applied not to genius in
general, but to the particular genius
which was originally designated ; with¬
out any alteration of form, or any
acknowledgment of the author in
whom the borrower found it; then it
is a direct case of literary theft : or, if
it be more polite so to style it, a case
of plagiarism.
Enough of this. The principle of
Farmer's Essay is, that because injudi¬
cious commentators thought they found
in the classics what Shakspeare had not
found there, the " old bard " never could
have consulted the classics at all. By
such a process, the same case could
be proved against Milton himself.
P. Hume discovers, for example, that
amerced in the line,—
" Millions of spirits for bis fault amerced
Of heaven,"—(Par. Lost, i. 609.)
has " a strange affinity with the Greek
to deprive, to take away," as
Homer has used it, much to our pur¬
pose, Odyss. viii. 64 :
filv 'AMEP2E, SAav X
acthnv —
" The muse amerced him of his eyes,
but gave him llie faculty of singing
sweetly ;" amerced being, in fact, a
technical word of our law, derived to
us from the Norman-French amercicr.
Newton is of opinion that, iit Comus,
258
I>r. Farmers Essay on [September,
Milton, by bis use of the word gazed,
in the line,
" Tliis nymph that gaz'd upon his cluster¬
ing loots,"—(Comus, V. 54.)
deduced it from llyaZ,(>nai— gaze being
a Saxon word of old Teutonic root,
Ge-sean (conlentis oculis aspicere, says
Skinner), ft would be easy to give other
examples, but let these suffice. Some
future F.armer may adduce, as a proof of
the ignorance or folly of tliose who were
preposterously determined to prove
that Miltou had read Homer, that they
found it necessary to press words de¬
rived from our Saxon or Norman an¬
cestors into their service, as coming
from the Greek, which therefore Milton
did not understand. Or again, when
Bentley remarks that
" Thrice he assay'd, and thrice, in spite
of scorn.
Tears, such as angels weep, hurst forth,"
(Par. Lost, i. 619.)
is suggested by Ovid's
"Ter conata loqui, ter fletibus ora rigahat,"
{Metam, xi. 419.)
the doctor has pointed out the wrong
authority ; because as we find that
Sackville, in his Induction of the
Mirror for Magistrates, last stanza,
has
" Thryse he began to tell his doleful tale.
And thryse the sighs did swallow up his
voice,"
it must have been not to Ovid, but to
Sackville, Milton is indebted. Or,
finally (for it is not worth while to
waste time on suppositions so ridi¬
culous) when Addison assures us that
miscreated, embn/on, and other words,
are coined by Milton, appropriately
referring to a nonsensical " discourse
in Plutarch, which shews us how
frequently Homer made use of the
same liberty " [well, indeed, was Plu¬
tarch qualified to judge of the fontes
of the language of Homer !] ; while,
on the contrary, we find these words
common in Spenser, Sylvester, Donne,
Massinger, Browne, and others, who
long precede the Paradise Lost : are
we to come forward to the rescue of
Milton, and defend hiin from the
charge of coining and uttering words
not duly licensed, because Addison
happetred not to have read or remem¬
bered the translation of Du Bartas, the
plays of Massinger, the poems of
Donne, the British Pastorals, or the
Faerie Queene? On Farmer's prin¬
ciple, that the author is responsible for
the ignorance or folly of his critic, all
this should be.
He commences by adducing what
external testimony he can gather, to
prove Shakspeare's want of learning.
His witnesses are—I take them as he
sets them down—
1. Ben Jonson's often-quoted line,
about Shakspeare's small Latin and
less Greek ; which Farmer lakes care
to tell us was quoted more than a cen¬
tury before his time—in 1651—as
sm.all Latin, and no Greek, by W.
Towers, in a panegyric on Cartwright ;
" whether an error or not," the candid
critic will not undertake to decide.
2. Drayton, the counti-yman and
acquaintance ofShakspeare, determines
his excellence by his naturall braine
only.
3. Digges, a wit of the town, before
our poet left the stage, is very strong
on the point :
" Nature only helpt him, for looke thorow
This whole book,* thou shall find he doth
not borow
One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines
imitate.
Nor onco from vulgar languages trans¬
late."
4. Suckling opposed hiseniier strain
to the stoeof of the learned Jonson.
5. Denham assures us that all Ire
had was from old mother-wit.
6. Every body remembers Milton's
celebration of his native wood-notes
wild.
7. Dryden observes, prettily enough,
that " he wanted not the spectacles of
books to read nature."
8. The ever-memorable Hales, of
Eton, bad too great a knowledge, both
of Shakspeare and the ancients, to al¬
low much acquaintance between them ;
and urged very justly, on the part of
genius, in opposition to pedantry, that
" if he had not read the ancients, he
had not stolen from them and if any
topic was produced from a poet of an¬
tiquity, he would undertake to shew
somewhat on the same subject, at least
as well written by Shakspeare.
9. Fuller declares positively that his
learning was very little—nature was
• The first folio to which the poem in which these lines occur was to have been
prefixed.
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
259
all the art used upon him, as he himself,
if alive, would confess.
10. Shakspeare has in fact con¬
fessed it, when he apologised for
his untutored lines to the Earl of
Southampton.
11. "This list of witnesses," says
Farmer, triumpiiantly summing up,
" might be easily enlarged, but I flatter
myself I shall stand in no need of such
evidence."
Taking them seriatim, the first is
the only one worthy of the slightest
attention. Ben Jonson knew Shak¬
speare intimately, and was in every
w.ay qualified to offer an opinion on
his learning. All the silly surmises of
his hostility or jealousy towards Shak¬
speare, with which Steevens, and other
critics of tiie same calibre, cram their
notes, have been demonstrated to be
mere trasb, undeserving of a moment's
notice. Ben had a warm-hearted affec¬
tion, a deeply grateful feeling, and a
profound admiration for Shakspeare,
which he displayed during the life and
after the death of his illustrious friend.
It is a most unfair and unjust calumny
on so eminent an ornament of our lite¬
rature, or any literature, as Ben Jonson,
to assert, or insinuate the contrary.
Jealousy or envy could have had no
part in his appreciation of Shakspeare's
learning ; and this dictum proves no¬
thing, until we can determine what is
thequantity of either, which Ben Jonson
would have characterised as much Latin
or Greek. So practised and exact a
scholar would estimate but cheaply any
thing short of a very considerable quan¬
tity of both. If Bentley were to speak
of Farmer, or any other man of similar
pretensions to classical knowledge,
it is highly probable the unsparing
doctor would have said that such peo¬
ple knew nothing at all of either Greek
or Latin ; and yet the Master of Em¬
manuel must have been tolerably well
versed in both, even if thus disparaged
by the Master ofTiinity. The crtif-
corum longe maximus would have in¬
tended nothing more, than that scholars
of inferior grade were not to be com¬
pared with those viri clarissimi atque
eruditissimi, among -«iliora Bentleius
doctissimus was himself so eminent.
In like manner Jonson, in this oft-
quoted line, only meant to say that
Shakspeare's acquirements in the learn¬
ed languages were small in comparison
with those of professed scholars of scho¬
lastic fame. But surely it is not neces¬
sary to consider that, because Shak¬
speare was not as erudite as Casaubon,
he must be set down as totally ignorant ?
In fact, we ought to quote Jonson as an
authority on the side opposed to that
espoused by Farmer : for the possession
of any Greek knowledge at all in the
days of Elizabeth argues a very respect-
abie knowledge of Latin ; because, at
that time, it was only through Latin,
and by means of no small acquaintance
with its literature, the Greek language
could be ever so slightly studied.
2. Drayton's compliment to Shak¬
speare's natural bruin—
3. Digges's assurance that Nature
only helpt him—
4. Suckling's pi'cference of his easier
strain to the learned sweat of Jonson—
5. Denham's assertion, that all he
had was from old mother-wit —
6. [I pass Milton for a moment.]
Dry den's pretty remark on the spec¬
tacles of art, &c.—
7. [I postpone Hales.] Fuller's po¬
sitive declaration about art and nature,
&c. : all these intend the one thing,
that the genius of Shakspeare, his na-
tur.'l brain, his old mother-wit, is the
gift which, by fastening him upon the
thoughts and feelings of mankind, has
rendered him immortal. Had he pos¬
sessed all the learning of the Scaligers,
would not such acquirements, and the
fame attendant, have been matters alto¬
gether of no consideration, compared
with Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo—any of
his plays ? In these hunted-up opinions,
all of them hastily thrown out, there runs
the false and foolish distinction between
nature and art in works of genius.
The great masters irr arry of the ele¬
vating branches of human thought ex¬
cel inferior spirits, as much in the art
of composition, in critical arrangement
of detail, in the due keeping of minor
parts, in exactness as well as in deli¬
cacy of taste, as they do in the gr-ander
powers that awaken terror or pity,
amazemerrt or admiration. Sure I am,
that true criticism would detect more
material sins against taste and art, the
favourite topics of the school of gout,
in any one of the tragedies ofCovueille,
Voltaire, or Racine, great as the ta¬
lents of their authors unquestionably
were, than hypevcriticism could venture
to point out as such in all the tragedies
ofShakspeare. Men, however, who are
full of the idea that there is something
opposed to each other in poetical art
and poetical nature, may justly imagine
260
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[September,
wtiere itiey see itic latter so tran¬
scendant, tliere is a necessary absence
of the former. Suckling, for example,
when he prefers the easier strain of
Shakspeare to the learned sweat of
Jonson, implies an opinion that the
sweat was owing to an abundance of
learning, and the easiness, therefore,
to a want of it. lie need not have
looked further than the Comus of his
own contemporary to find that grace,
airiness, and elegance, almost rivalling
the easiest parts of the As you Like It
of Sliakspeare, may abound in a mask
written by one more learned still than
Jonson.
8. What the ever-memorable Hales
of Eton [who, notwithstanding his epi¬
thet, Farmer says, " is, I fear, almost
forgotten;" i.e. in the timeof his JEssn^;
in our time he is wholly so] main¬
tained is true enough, but nothing to
the point. From Shakspeare, passages
on any given subject can no doubt be
produced, rivalling the noblest of the
ancient authors, and surpassing most
of them ; and he has others peculiar to
himself, in paths not before trodden.
How does this prove that he had never
read the classics ? If the prayer of
Milton to Urania, that she would assist
him in soaring above the Aonian mount,
above the fliglit ofPegasean wing, were
granted, does it therefore follow that he
had never visited the mountain of the
Muses, or fled with the steed of Pagan
poesy ? Or when Lucretius boasts—
" Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante
Trita solo,"—( De Uer, Nut. 1, vi. i.)
are we to imagine that he never was in
company with those who travelled with
the Piérides, and had trodden in their
habitual paths ?
9. Milton's wood-notes wild are, in¬
deed, familiar to every one ; but the
reference to them here proves only that
Farmer misunderstood what the poet
meant. The passage in which they
occur is
" Towered cities please us then.
And the busy hum of men,
• * * •
And pomp, and feast, and revelry.
With mask and antique pageantiy ;
Such sights as youthful poet's dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well.trod stage anon.
If Jonson's learned sock be on.
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild,"—
Allegro, 115-134.)
I. e., the mirthful man desires to see
at court masks, in which Ben Jonson
excelled, and in the theatre his learned
comedies. And as the courtly pa¬
geantry summons before him romantic
visions, then to the stage he goes to
see those poetic dreams on summer
eves embodied by the fanciful crea¬
tions of Shakspeare, sweetly singing
free forest ditties, warbling, without any
other source of inspiration but the
sylvan scene around, notes native to
himself, and equally native to the
wood — the " boscaresce inculte avene"
ofTasso.— Gier. Lib. c. vii. 6. The
reference in L'Allcgro is almost by
name to Midsummer Night's Dream,
and has nothing to do with the general
question of Shakspeare's learning. If
we wished to be critical in Farmer¬
like fashion, we might obsen'e, that
the title which Milton borrows from
Love's Labour's Lost, to apply to the
poet himself, belongs in the original to
a character precisely the reverse of be¬
ing unlearned,—
" This child of fancy, that Armado bight.
For interim to our studies, shall relate.
In high-bom words, the worth of many
a knight
From tawny Spain, lost in the world's
debate,"
(¿ore's Labour's Lost, act. i. sc. 1.)
— one who for himself would prefer to
use veni, vidi, vid; but, for informa¬
tion of the " base and obscure vulgar,"
condescends to "anatomise" it into
English (act iv. sc. i.) ; who is de¬
scribed by Holofernes (act v. sc. 1)
as too peregrinate,—a racker of ortho¬
graphy, and so forth ; and who con¬
cludes the play by a duet (" When
daisies pied,'' &c.) between Hiems and
Ver, whom he stoops to inform us to
be Winter and Spring.
10. The poets own declaration to
his noble patron, that his lines are
untutored, is, it seems, a proof of his
want of learning. With such critics
we must, indeed, talk by the card. Are
we to take it for granted that Horace,
whose boast in his Odes is that,
" Exegi monumentum sere perennius,"
(Od. lib. iii. od. 30.)
wishes us to believe him at his word,
when he tells us, in his Satires, I. iv. 42,
that we are not to consider him a poet?
that Persius really thought himself a
" semipaganus," prol. ver. 6? that
Juvenal was in earnest when he classed
himself with a ridiculous versifier ?
I take these at random, merely because
1839.] the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
261
I linppcn to have a collection of Latin
poetry lying before me ; for hiindrecis
of other specimens of this mock-
modesty might be collected in every
literature. Are we to believe Shak¬
speare himself, for example, when he
makes his chorus tell us, at the end of
Henry V., that the play which con¬
tains " O! for a muse of fire!"—the
exhortations of Archbishop Chichely,
—the commonwealth of the bees,—
Henry's reflections on ceremony,— his
glorious speeches, urging the attack on
Harfleur, and rousing to the battle of
St. Crispin's day,—the chorus descrip¬
tive of the eve of Agincourt,—and many
other passages of poetic thought and
brilliancy, were written " with rough,
and all unable pen," or suppose with
the chorus at its beginning, that it was
dictated by a " flat, unraised spirit ?"
We must take these things not merely
with a grain, but a handful of salt.
Farmer himself, if he had had the for¬
tune of being elected a bishop, would,
I venture to say, have thought it an
extremely harsh construction of the
text, if the chapter had construed his
" Holo Episcopari" as literally as he
here construes Shakspeare's confession
of his being untutored.
11. There only remains of the cloud
of witnesses Farmer's own testimony
that the number might easily be en¬
larged. This is a figure of rhetoric of
which I know not the name ; but it is
of frequent use in courts and parlia¬
ments, when the speaker, having said
every thing he could think of, con¬
cludes by, " I .shall say no more and
that precisely because he has no more
to say. Farmer had exhausted every
authority that he could gather ; and
the sum of his labours is, that Jonson,
in the pride of his own erudition,
thought little of the classical attain¬
ments of Shakspeare ; that Hales as¬
serted, and truly, that he could find
parallel passages to the best things in
the classics in our own poet ; that
Milton admired the wild and native
forest poetry of Midsummer Night's
Dream ; and that readers in general,
who do not take the trouble of critically
examining the writings they enthusi¬
astically admire, are so struck witii
the original genius of the author, that
they deem it unnecessary to suppose
him in any considerable degree in¬
debted to the ordinary aids of learning
and scholarship. Be it observed, that
not one of them except Ben Jonson
had better opportunities of forming a
judgment than ourselves. Digges
would find himself much puzzled to
prove, that in the whole folio of the
plays there is not one phrase imitated
from Greek and Latin, or a single
translation. Fuller, who says, that if
the author were alive he would confess
his learning to have been little, knew
scarcely any thing about him, as his
few trifling, vague, and erroneous anec¬
dotes prove. Denham may assure us
Shakspeare was indebted merely to
his old mother-wit ; but who assured
Denham ? In fact, the ignorance
of every thing connected with Shak¬
speare, displayed by wits and critics
of the days of Charles IL, is abso¬
lutely wonderful, and not at all cre¬
ditable to the mob of gentlemen who
writ with ease.
A lamer case than Farmer's, was in
fact never exhibited, so far as evidence
is considered. Such, however, was not
his own opinion ; for, having gene¬
rously left some testimony behind, as
unnecessary, he proceeds to go through
the various critics and commentators
who have held different opinions on the
question. Gildon, whom, of course,
he insults, because he was insulted in
the Duneiad ; Se well; Upton, declare
absolutely for the learning of Shak¬
speare. Pope thinks there is but little
ground for the common opinion of his
want of learning; Theobald is unwil¬
ling to believe him to be so poor a
scholar as many have laboured to re¬
present him, but will not be too posi¬
tive ; Dr. Grey thinks his knowledge
of Greek and Latin cannot be reason¬
ably called in question ; Dr. Dodd con¬
siders it proved that he was not such a
novice in learning as some people pre¬
tend ; and Mr. Whalley — But I must
transcribe this passage from Farmer:—
" Mr. Whalley, the ingenious editor of
Jonson, hath written a piece expressly
oh this side of the question ; perhaps
from a very excusable partiality he was
willing to draw Shakspeare from the
field of nature to classic ground,
where alone he knew his author could
possibly cope with him." I must
transcribe this, I say, because it is a
beautiful specimen of that style of fine
writing, and elegant turn of compli¬
ment, which must have been irresistible
in a common room. Warburton ex¬
poses the weakness of some arguments
from suspected imitations, but offers
others which Farmer supposes he could
262
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[September,
have as easily refuted. And Dennis,
who is slandered from the same motive
as that wiiich dictated the insult to
Gildon, declares, that " he who allows
Shakspeare had learning, and a learn¬
ing with the ancients, ought to be
looked upon as a detractor from the
glory of Great Britain,"—a subject
which very much disturbed Pope's
unlucky victim.
Farmer's principal quarrel seems to
be with Upton, whom he treats most
unfairly. Of him he says, " lie, like
the learned knight, at every anomaly of
grammar or metre,
' Ilath hard words ready to shew why,
And tell what rule he did it by.'
IIow would the old bard have been
astonished to have found that he had
very skilfully given the trochaic dimeter
Irachycatakctic, commonly called the
ithyphullic, measure to the witches of
Macbeth; and that now and then a
halting verse afforded a most beautiful
instance of the pes proceleusmaticus
I have followed the typography of
Farmer, because in that seems to me
to lie all his jest. What Shakspeare's
knowledge of Greek and Latin prosody,
if any, might have been, we cannot
tell ; and perhaps he neither knew
nor cared for the technical names
given by their prosodians to feet and
verses ; nor shall I, in this inappro¬
priate place, be tempted to inquire
whether these names are at all ap¬
plicable to English verse. Perhaps
they are not, and yet nobody objects
to calling our ordinary heroic verse,
iambic. Bentley, I know, maintains,
in the preface to his edition ofTerence,
that, " ut Latini omnia metroruin ge¬
nera de Grsecis acceperunt, ita nos-
trates sua de Lalinis and makes it, in
his own energetic way, " matter ofcom-
jrlaint and indignation [dolendum atque
indignandum^, that from the time of the
revival of letters, liberally educated
boys should be driven by the ferula
and the birch \^ferulá scuticáque cogi]
to learn dactylic metres, which the
genius of our native language does not
admit'; while, through the fault of their
roasters, they are wholly ignorant of
the Terentian metres, which, neverthe¬
less, they are continually singing,
without knowing it, at home and
in the streets." Bentley proceeds to
give examples, one of which is,—
" Quin et lambicus ille ¡caraXiKrixos
Terentio roultum et mérito amatus
apud nostros quoque in magna gratia
est :—
' Nam si remit- I -tent quippiam I Philiimenam I doldres.
He's décently | run through the lungs | and there's an end | o' bully.'
Now, certainly the author of this ele¬
gant English line—it looks like one of
'Fora D'Urfey's—would be much
astonished to be told he had written an
iambic tetrameter catalectic; and yet,
on Bentley's principle, nothing could
be more true. Admit that the Greek
and Latin method of scansion is appli¬
cable to English verse, and what
Farmer sneers at in Upton is indis¬
putably correct. " Shakspeare," says
the learned prebendary, in his Critical
Observations, p. 340, " uses not only
the iambic, but the trochaic measure :
as, for example, the trochaic dimeter
biachycatalectic, commonly called the
ilhyphallic, consisting of three trochees.
" Bâcchë
Whére hast
Bâcchë
thóu been,
Bâcchë.
sister t"—Mach,
Upton says not a word of Shak¬
speare's use of this metre; add
" the commonly called," which excites
the typographic merriment of Farmer,
is but the ordinary phraseology of the
prosodians. " Metrum est trochaicum
brachycatalecticum, vulco ithyphalli-
cum i.e. commonly so called by the
people who wrote it or sang it; not,
of course, commonly by another people
among whom it can be known only to
laborious scholars. If we described a
particular measure, as " the octosyl¬
labic metre, commonly called Iludi-
brastic," the phrase would sound strange
and pedantic to those who had never
heard of Iludibras. The pes proceleus¬
maticus, Upton truly observes, some¬
times of itself constitutes an anapxstic
line. If, then, we call such verses as
" ovër park, ôvër |)âle," anapaestic, we
must admit that Shakspeare uses oc¬
casionally the license of the ancients in
introducing spondees and dactyles in
the metre :—
" Through bush [ through briar,
Through flood ) throügh fire,"
are Upton's instances, p. 343. He does
not represent them as beautiful examples •
1839.] the Learniiuj of Shakspeare considered. 2()3
of lliepesproceleusmalicus ; and I cannot
see that there is any thing halting in their
versification. Shakspeare, admitting
Bentley's theory to be correct, and the
ordinary nomenclature of prosodians
applicable to English verse, wrote iam¬
bics, trochaics, anapxstics, in all the
varieties of monometer, dimeter, tri¬
meter, tetrameter, catalectic, acatalec-
tic, brachycatalectic, and other species
and genera of metre designated by
epithets of learned sound, just as
M. Jourdain spoke prose all his life
without knowing it ; or as in Ireland,
the finest peasantry under the sun
(when they can get them) feast upon
solana tuberosa condimented with
muriate of soda, which, to their unen¬
lightened minds, appear to be nothing
more than potatoes and salt. Yet you
would not laugh at the botanist or
chemist who gave these substances
their scientific names. Why then think
it ridiculous that the prosodian should
make use of the phraseology of his
art? But suppose him perfectly ab¬
surd in this, as well as in considering
the English words haver and having,
Greek expressions derived from ix<'a
and rev ixn'ra-, in deriving True¬
penny from r^tnravn ; in referring the
gravedigger's speech, " Ay, tell me
that and unyoke," to the ßouXvroi of the
Greeks; or in describing the " oiphan
heirs of fixed destiny" as an elegant
Grxcism, ¿(Çaves ab i^<pve¡, acting in
darkness and obscurity; all of which,
being precisely the most ridiculous
things in Upton, Farmer has carefully
picked out ; what is it to Shakspeare ?
How does it promote Farmer's argu¬
ment?
It promotes not his argument at all;
but it is of this dishonest use, that
retiders, whose minds are not generally
turned to classical or etymological
criticism, on seeing these things heaped
together in jest, as ridiculously ap¬
plied to an author so vernacularly
popular as their familiar and national
dramatist, are led to think that all
disquisitions of the kind are equally
laughable ; and that Ire who imagines
Shakspeare to have known any thing
whatever of a speci« of erudition ex¬
hibited to them in so absurd a form,
must be nothing better that a peddling
pedant, unworthy of being attended to.
It being considered in the highest de¬
gree improbable that Shakspeare pur¬
posely wrote " Where hast thou been,
sister ?" as a trochaic dimeter brachy-
calalectic ; and something rather comical
to find Truepenny derived from the
r^ueravev of the Clouds of Aristophanes,
with the learned interpretation of his
scholiast annexed ; it is easy for such
logicians as Dr. Farmer to conclude
that if such be the shifts necessary to
give " the old bard " a reputation for
learning, the cause must be desperate
indeed. It is, however, incumbent on
them to shew that they are necessary,
and that Shakspeare is to be answer¬
able for the etymological crotchets of
Upton. Before we part with him,
let me say that there is a consi¬
derable quantity of valuably directed
reading in Upton's observations, and
occasionally a display of good sense
and sound criticism. He must not be
judged by the appearance he makes in
Farmer's pamphlet. Being aventurons
etymologist, he indulges sometimes in
whimsical escapades—as which of the
tribe does not ?—sometimes more and
sometimes less laughable than those of
his brethren. He has nothing, for ex¬
ample, so wonderful as Menage's de¬
rivation of the French word chez from
the Latin apud ; and yet it would
require much hardihood or ignorance
to laugh at Menage.
Dismissing, therefore. Dr. Farmer's
war upon Upton, let us come to his
main charges affecting Shakspeare.
1. He first addresses himself to
Antony and Cleopatra, in the third act
of which Octavius says,—
" Unto her
He gave the 'stahlishment of Egypt;
made her
Of Lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,
Absolute queen."
Lydia, says the critic, should be Libya,
as in Plutarch vr^arriv fiiv ÙToprivi KXíí-
erur^av ßetriXirrav . . . AtCotis, x. r. X.
Retain the reading Lydia, says Far¬
mer ; for Shakspeare took it not from
the Greek of Plutarch, but the English
of Sir Thomas North. " First of all
he did establish Cleopatra queen of
Egypt, of Cyprus, of Lydia, and the
Lower Syria."
2. Again in the fourth act:—
" My messenger
Ho hath whipp'd with rods; dares me to
personal combat,
Cœsar to Antony. Let the old ruffian
know
I Iiave many other ways to die ; mean¬
time
Laugh at his challenge."
i)r. Farmer's Éssay on [September,
Tills is allercd by Upton into
" Let the old ruffian know
He hath many other ways to die ; mean-
time,
I laugh at his challenge."
This relieves Augustus from admitting
his inferiority in personal combat to
Antony, and is exactly what we find
in Plutarch. Retain the reading, how¬
ever, replies Farmer ; because Shaks-
peare was misled by the ambiguity of
the old translation. " Antonius sent
again to ciialienge Csesar to fight him ;
Caisar answered. That he had many
other ways to die than so."
3. In the third act o( Julius Casar,
Antony, reading the will, says,—
" Moreover, he hath left you all his
walks.
His private arbours, and new-planted
orchards
On this side Tiber."
Read, says Theobald, on that sideTiber.
" Trans Tiberim, prope Cajsaris hortos,"
and Plutarch rev erera/tev, beyond
the Tiber. Retain the text, says Far¬
mer; for we find in North, " lie left
his gardens and arbours unto the peo¬
ple, which he had on this side of the
river Tiber."
4. " Hence," i.e. from Sir Thomas
North's translation of Plutarch, pro¬
ceeds the Essay, " had our author his
characteristic knowledge of Brutus and
Antony, upon which much argumenta¬
tion for his learning hath been founded ;
and hence, literatim, the epitaph on
Timon, which it was once presumed
he had corrected from the blunders of
the Latin version by his own superior
knowledge of the original."
5. Pope says, " The speeches copied
from Plutarch in Coriolanus may, I
think, be as well made an instance of
the learning of Shakspeare, as those
copied from Cicero in Catiline of Ben
Jonson." To confute this opinion. Dr.
Farmer extracts, at length, the famous
speech of Volumnia :—
" Should we be silent and not speak, our
raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what
life
We've led since thy exile," &c.,
which he contrasts with the same speech
in North's Plutarch, also transcribed
at length. " If we helde our peace
(my sonne) and determined not to
speeke, the state of our poor bodies
and poorest sight of our rayment would
easily bewray to thee what life we have
led at home, since thy exile and abode
abroad," &c. It certainly is indisput¬
able that Shakspeare has done very
little more than to throw North's prose
into blank verse.
These are all the passages from Plu¬
tarch. " I could furnish you," says
Farmer, " with many more instances,
but these are as good as a thousand."
On this figure of speech I have re¬
marked already. Farmer brought all
he thought of any value to his argu¬
ment, and ceased furnishing more
when he had no more to furnish. Let
us now consider what he has furnished.
1. That in Shakspeare Antony is
made to give Cleopatra Lydia, when in
Plutarch, and in fact, he gave her Libya
is perfectly true. It is true, also, that
the mistake occurs in Sir Thomas
North ; but an exact hunter after these
choses de niant ought to have looked
somewhat further. North avowedly
translated not from the original, but
from the French of Amyot. Farmer
quotes the epigram about it : —
" 'T was Greek at first, that Greek was
Latin made ; ■
That Latin, French ; that French to En¬
glish strayed," &c.
And in Amyot (6) we find " qu'il esla-
blissoit premièrement Cleopatra, Heyne
d'iEgypte, de Cypre, de Lidye, et de
la basse Syrie," p. 1132, ed. 1579.
Was Shakspeare, if he hunted at all for
an authority (which, of course, he did
not), bound to hunt further than his
original's original ?
2. In the repartee of Octavius, the
point is this : " I decline Antonius's
challenge, because he has many other
ways to die [public execution, suicide,
&c.], besides being killed in duel with
me, which will be the certain conse¬
quence if I meet him." As it appears
in the received text of Shakspeare, it
implies, " I decline the challenge, be¬
cause I have many other ways to die,
besides that arising from the chance of
throwing away my life in a brawl with
an old ruffian." This hardly implies a
confession of inferiority, although it is
not the original repartee. But I am not
quite so sure that Shakspeare wrote it
as we have it. It appears thus :
"Let the old ruffian know
I have many other ways to die; meantime,
Laugh at his challenge.
Mecanos, Csesar must know," &c.
1839.] " the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
265
The last line being unmetrical, is
mended by inserting needs ;
" Laugh at his challenge —Caesar needs
must know."
Taking the repartee literally as it ap¬
pears in North, Shakspeare's ordinary
practice may afford a better reading :
" Let the old ruffian know
He hath many other ways to die than so.
Meantime, I laugh at's challenge.
Mec. Caesar must know."
Now, where we find certain proofs of
negligent editing, we have a right to
give our suspicions of incorrectness
fuller scope. May not this passage
have been amended by the player-
editors, or the printers ? Is it any very
violent conjecture to imagine that Shak¬
speare had seized the spirit of Plutarch,
and written,
" He hath many other ways to die than so,"
being the exact words of North, with¬
out alteration of a letter, except the
necessary change of haíA for had, and
tiiat some printing or editorial blunder¬
ing has jumbled the pronouns. The
supposition is in complete conformity
with Shakspeare's practice ; and it re¬
moves the metrical difficulty.
3. It is true that Caesar bequeathed
to the Roman people his gardens on
that side Tiber. Hí^íí» mu wora/iou,
as Plutarch translates trans Tiber im.
North, followed by Shakspeare, gives
it on this side. The mistake, again, is
to be referred to Amyot—au deçà for
au delà. And I repeat my former
question, Was Shakspeare bound to
look further?
4. From North, Siiakspeare had
his characteristic knowledge of Brutus
and Antony ! Were it said that Plu¬
tarch, either in Greek or Latin, French
or English, supplied Shakspeare with
his materials for drawing those cha¬
racters, nobody would demur : but I
sliould be surprised, indeed, if any one
maintained tiiat in the dry bones of tiie
old Boeotian there could be found any
thing more than the skeletons of the
living men called out of the valley of
Jehoshapbat by Shakspeare. Plutarch
or North gave him the characters of his
Greek or Roman heroes, just as much
as llolinshed and Hall gave him those
of Henry V. or Richard III. ; as
Suxo-Grammuticus, or the Tragédie of
llumblet, supplied him with Hamlet
the Dane ; as Fordun or Buchanan, or
the English chroniclers, helped him to
create Macbeth ; or the old Tragical
History of Romeus and Juliet furnished
him with the characters, grave and gay,
brilliant and tragic, which fill the scene
of that " story of such wo." This
will not pass. The epitaph on Timon
is certainly to be found in North—so
minute a critic as Farmer ought not
to have said literatim, because more
than a letter, a whole word, consisting
f eight letters, " wretches," is altered
into another word of eight letters also,
but for the most part different, " cai-
tives or, perhaps, even of nine, if,
more majorum, you spell it " caitiffes."
5, I have already admitted that Vo-
lumnia's speech, in Coriolanus, is no¬
thing more than a transposition, as
Bayes would call it, of North's prose
into blank verse. It is, therefore, clearly
proved that Siiakspeare used Sir Tho¬
mas's translation as the text-book of
Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Casar
and Coriolanus ; that in three, or, if
my reading be admitted, two passages,
it misled him ; and that in a fourth
he merely versified its prose. I
protest, however, against being sup¬
posed to admit, that in North or in
Plutarch he found his Greek and Ro¬
man characters. How does all this
trumpery prove that he could not have
read Plutarch in the original ?
In this manner, it will be replied ;—
If he had read the original, he would
not have made the blunders of Lydia
for Libya, or " on this side Tiber " for
" on that side Tiber.'' This is petty
criticism indeed. Did any one ever
imagine that it was the duty of Shak¬
speare to turn verbal critic, and correct
the blunders of the versions of North
or Amyot by his own superior Greek
erudition ? and the answer will be,
" Yes, Theobald."
A worse-used man does not exist
in our literature than this same poor
Theobald. He was, in truth, the first
useful commentator on Shakspeare,
Rowe and Pope having done little or
nothing more than adorn the art of
editorship with their names. It is
the commentary of Theobald that
guides all his successors, including
those who most insult him. His read¬
ing, though-ill digested, was multi¬
farious, and his skill in conjectural
criticism of no mean order. That he
was full of self-conceit, and inspired
by a jealous dislike of Pope, which
tinges his notes with unpleasant acer-
266
Dr. Farmer's Essay on [September,
bities, and crowds them witli dispropor¬
tionately triumphant swellings over the
detection of real or supposed errors in
the merest trifles, is not to be denied.
Pope, he thought, and with some jus¬
tice, had treated him unfairly, in de¬
viating from the paths of poetry, to
intrude into the walks of commentator-
ship, especially as it was known that
Theobald had been long engaged upon
Shakspeare, before the booksellers
enlisted Pope. It was hard, he felt,
that a great name should be called
in to blight the labours of his life ;
and he was determined to shew that,
however great that name might be in
its proper region, it was small enough
when it wandered elsewhere. He might
fairly complain against the literary
ambition, which, not satisfied with its
triumphs in the Essai/ on Man, in
Abelard and Eloisa, in the translation
of Homer, in the Rape of the Lock,
in epic and pastoral, wjt and satire,
was resolved to crush an humbler vo¬
tary of letters, whose highest preten¬
sion was not loftier than to shine as a
scholiast. Ahab, when not content
with governing the kingdom of Israel
he coveted Naboth's poor garden of
herbs, and obtained it through the own¬
er's destruction, could not have ap¬
peared more atrocious than Pope in
the eyes of Theobald ; and having
found his enemy where he had him at
some advantage, he resolved to shew
no mercy.
It will be admitted, also, that bis
notes are often of an unconscionable
length — a fault which he shares with
the classical commentators. Hiscontem-
porary, Hemsterhusius, for example,
so much admired by his brother critics
[at guanlus vir ! is the enthusiastic ex¬
clamation of Ilgen, on the mention of
his name], is thrice as prosy. Theobald
had vowed to treat Shakspeare as a
classic, and therefore bestowed his te-
diousness upon him with as much
good-will and generosity, as his more
erudite fellow-labourers did upon the
authors of Greece and Rome. But
with all these defects, it was he who
set the example of a proper collation
of the original editions — for as to his
predecessors, Rowe did not collate at
all, and Pope's collations are so slight
and careless as to be scarcely worth
notice—he examined the text with
minute accuracy—he «ead much of
that reading, which Pope — who as a
poet and a man of taste was jterfectly
right in despising, but as an editor
equally wrong in neglecting—stigma¬
tised, because he was too lazy to consult,
as being never read, alluding (in the
Dunciad) to the very case ofTlieobald,
and thereby threw much light upon the
meaning of his author ; while, by point¬
ing out the path to other commentators,
he was the indirect cause of throwing
much more ; and, on the whole, he
must be considered as one of the most
useful pioneers in Shakspearian com-
menlatorship. He did not aspire to
much higher glory.
I am dwelling on Tlieobald, be¬
cause I find him occupying so much
attention in this pamphlet of Farmer's.
Independently of fifty sneers directed
against him for his edition of Shak¬
speare, the doctor goes out of his way
to discuss at much length the authen¬
ticity of the Double Falsehood, " which
Mr. Theobald was desirous of palming
on the world as a posthumous play of
Shakspeare." If this be an error, as
undoubtedly it is, it is almost shared
by Pope, who, as Farmer himself re¬
marks, refers it to the Shakspearian age.
With great sagacity, the pamphlet pro¬
ceeds to shew that the accenting of
áspect in the modern manner, instead
of aspect in the more ancient, detects
the later date of the play. This is
followed by a discussion on its pronun¬
ciation in Milton, with the accustomed
sneer on " such commentators"—one
of them being Bentley. Then comes
his opinion that the play was written
by Siiirley ; wound op by a couple
of passages from that dramatist and
Donne, to which Farmer thinks Milton
was indebted in his Paradise Lost.
All this needless digression is intro¬
duced merely to have a fling at Theo¬
bald, for having wished to appropriate
to himself some lines, which it seems
were particularly admired — I know
not by whom—from the Double False¬
hood, which, " after all, is superior to
Theobald " (c).
As it is no very remarkable crime to
be a bad editor of Shakspeare, we
might wonder why this poor devil of a
critic was so rancourously hunted, did
we not find the cause in his having in¬
curred the hostility of Pope in the
plenitude of the poet's power and po¬
pularity, and enjoyed the friendship of
Warhurton, at the period of the em¬
bryo bishop's poverty. Pope having
made him the hero of the Dunciad, \l
was necessary that Warhurton should
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
267
for ever disclaim all association with
his quondam brother in Grub Street,
and shew, by a perpetual strain of in¬
sult, that nothing beyond a slight and
contemptuous approach towards the
relation of patron and dependent ever
existed between them. Hence his
studied confusion, in the shape of an
antithesis, between his " accidental con¬
nexions" with Theobald and Sir
Thomas Hanmer. " The one was re¬
commended to me as a poor man, the
other as a poor critic ; and to each of
them, at different times, I communi¬
cated a great number of observations,
which they managed, as they saw fit,
to the relief of their seveml distresses.
As to Mr. Theobald, who wanted
money, I allowed him to print what I
gave him for his own advantage," &c.
This is pitiful work. Warburton was
just as poor as Theobald when he pre¬
tends he patronised him ; and it will
be seen by Nichols's Illustrations of
the Literary History of the Nineteenth
Century, that they were on such terms
of critical intimacy as to make it as
likely that Theobald assisted Warbur¬
ton in such matters as Warburton
Theobald. It was in after-years, when
the fame of the bishop was at its zenith,
that the accidental discovery of a letter
from him to Concanen,—who is abused
in the Dunciad for no earthly reason
but that, being a small political writer,
he was connected with some ephemeral
publications which provoked Pope, and
is consequently " whipt at the cart's
tail" in Warburton's notes,—proved
that he had, in the commencement of
his literary career, been intimately con¬
nected with " the Dunces." This dis¬
covery made a great noise, as if it had
been a matter of the slightest import¬
ance, which indeed it was not, except for
the purpose of annoying the Warbur-
tonians (rf)—as it did in no small degree
— and the letter, with the history of its
detection, is duly printed in Malone's
edition ofShakspeare, among other irre¬
levant matter, to the needless swelling
of that crescens cadaver, and made the
subject of various sagacious remarks and
expressions of wonder,— so great was
the impression of ^e produced by the
satires of Pope. The Dunciad is now
forgotten ; and, but for the surrounding
matter of the poems it accompanies,
would never be reprinted. As it is
Pope's, it must make part of every
edition of his works: fur, us some of
his happiest lines tell us,—
" Pretty ! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or
worms !
The things, we know, are neither rich
nor rare.
But wonder how the devil they got
there."
But it was once esteemed quite as rich
and rare as the amber in which it is
now preserved, and nothing was con¬
sidered more scandalous than to refrain
from insulting its victims. Mallet, for
example, a paltry creature, thought he
said something very witty and wise, as
well as tending to bow his way up in
the world, when, in his Verbal Cri¬
ticism, he vented such a distich as
(I quote from memory ; it is not worth
while verifying such things) —
" But not a sprig of laurel graced these
ribalds.
From slashing Bentley down to piddling
Tibbalds."
And Farmer, in the pamphlet I am
following, appends a note, to inform
us that Dennis was expelled his college
for attempting to stab a man in the
dark. " Pope," he adds, " would
have been glad of this anecdote."
Perhaps he might; for, with all his
genius, he was in his personal spites
small-minded. But what has it to do
in an Essay on the Learning of Shak¬
speare ? Exactly this. To those with
whom Shakspeare was an old bard, the
Dunciad was an immortal poem, as
worthy, of finding its scholiasts as
Aristophanes; and Farmer wished to
assist with his bit of knowledge. To
quit Theobald, however, let me re¬
mark, that a satire in whieh Defoe ap¬
pears only as a pilloried pamphleteer ;
Gibber as a dull dunce; Mrs. Cent-
livre as a cook's wife ; Bentley as a
letter-quibbling blockhead ; Burnet as
a hack paragraph-writer; and so forth,
cannot be applauded for its justice. It
is really a pity to see so much mastery
of language and harmony of verse
wasted on purposes so unworthy ; and
I have often thought it still more mat¬
ter of regret that Johnson himself, rag¬
ged of knee, and gobbling broken
meat behind a screen in St. John's
Gate, cheered by the applause of VValter
Harte, admitted to the honour of being
dinner-companion of his peddling em¬
ployer (if the story be true, which, how¬
ever, may be doubted)—that Johnson,
tattered in attire by the tailoring, and
half-starved by the dinnering, of Cave,
should have followed the fashion in
268
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[September,
speaking hardly of an unfortunate
wight already blasted by lightnings
flung by the dii majorum among the
literature of the day.
We have now got very nearly through
half Doctor farmer's pamphlet, and
the main fact as yet established is, that
Shakspeare used Nortii's translation of
Plutarch. All the Greek that remains
to be disposed of is :—
1. The passage in Timon of Athens,
act iv. sc. iii :—
" The sun's a thief, and with bis great
attraction
Robs the vast sea. The moon 's an
arrant thief," &c.,
is generally referred to Anacreon's
nineteenth ode, à y» (¿ixalta «mi, *. r. x.
And some one [name not quoted]
imagines that it would be puzzling to
prove that there was a Latin transla¬
tion of Anacreon at the time Shak¬
speare wrote his Timan of Athens.
" This challenge," replies Farmer, " is
peculiarly unhappy; for I do not at
present recollect any other classic (if,
indeed, with great deference to Mynheer
De Pauw"—this is wit—"Anacreon
may be numbered among them) that
was originally published with two
Latin translations." And what of
that ? It may shew the bibliogra¬
phical ignorance of the anonymous
some one, and the bibliographical
knowledge of Farmer; but how does it
affect Shakspeare? At first sight, we
should suppose that some concession
to his " small Latin" was here in¬
tended ; that if the " old bard " could
not be allowed to understand the Greek
of Anacreon, he might be deemed suffi¬
ciently learned to read the Latin of
Stephanus or Andreas. But no. Put-
tenham, in his Arte of Poetry, quotes
some one of a reasonable good facilitie
in translation, who had translated cer¬
taine of Anacreon's odes from the
translation of Ronsard, the French
poet. Now, continues Farmer, this
identical ode is to be met in Ronsard ;
and, in compassion to the ignorance of
his readers, he transcribes it :—
" La terre les eaux va boivant
L'arbre la boit par sa racine," &c.
Now I continue, as Farmer had not
seen the book referred to by Putten-
ham, and could not therefore know
that it contained a version of this ode
from Ronsard, he was at least hardy in
his reference to it. The plagiary cen¬
sured by Puttenham was John Southern ;
and it is nothing to Farmer's purpose,
if we find the identical Anacreontic in
Ronsard, if it is not in Southern also.
If it happens, that it is not one of the
stolen odes — i.e. if they were stolen,
which, with deference to Puttenham,
does not appear so very clear — in
Southern's collection. Farmer's argu¬
ment falls to the ground. But sup¬
pose it there, and in the most pro¬
minent place, what then ? If Mr.
Millman wrote a tragedy now, and in¬
troduced into it an imitation of Ana¬
creon, are we, therefore to contend that
he was indebted for it to Mr. Moore,
and could not consult the original
Greek. The argument is, that wher¬
ever an English translation of a classic
could be found, no matter how worth¬
less or obscure, we are to presume that
Shakspeare made that his study, from
inability to read any other language.
Verily, this is begging the question. I
think it highly probable that Shak¬
speare had the idea from Ronsard,
whose popularity had not been ef¬
faced in his time ; but, really, it is
not so wonderful a feat to master the
Greek of Anacreon as to make me
consider it impossible that he drew it
from the fountain-head. At all events,
we may contend that he did noi draw
it from the source indicated by Farmer,
until it is proved that it is there to
draw (e).
2. Mrs. Lenox maintains, that in
Troilus and Cressida, when Achilles is
roused to battle by the death of Patro-
clus, Shakspeare must have had the
Iliad itself in view, as the incident is
not to be found in the old story—the
Recuyel of the Historyes of Troy.
3. Mr. Upton is positive the sweet
oblivious antidote inquired after by
Macbeth could be nothing but the
nepenthe described in the Odyssey.
Nxyiváíf r%, KUKUt
àvavxuv*
There is, contends Dr. Farmer, no
necessity of sending us to the Iliad or
the Odyssey; for the circumstance of
Patroclus might be learnt from Alex¬
ander Barclay's Ship ofFooles: " Who
list the story of Patroclus to reade,"
&c. ; and nepenthe more fully from
Spenser than from Homer himself.
Certainly more fully; for Homer dis¬
misses it in six or seven lines. Od.
Î. 220-220 : but Spenser does not give
one remarkable word which Homer
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
269
supplies, and of wliich we find the
equivalent in Shakspeare. I copy what
Farmer quotes from the Fuérie Queene,
b. iv. c. iii. St. 43 : —
" Nepenthe is a d rinck ofsoveragne grace.
Devized by the gods, for to asswago
Hart's grief, and bitter gall away to
chace ;
Instead thereof sweet peace and quiet-
age,
It doth establish in the troubled mind,"
¿CC.
This is unquestionably a fine poet¬
ical amplification of Homer, but it
misses the word — oblivious.
Where did Sliakspeare find this?
Perliaps in the Latin translation —
" malornm oblivioiiein inducens om-
nium." Perhaps in Virgil's " longa
oblivia potant." Certainly not in
Spenser. It is fair to Upton to re¬
mark, that he is not positive on the
point ; nor does he say the antidote
could be nothing else but the nepen¬
the described in the Odyssey. He
quotes the passage from Macbeth, and
then in a note {Crit. Obser. p. 56)
merely says, " Alluding to the nepen¬
the, a certain mixture, of which, per¬
haps, opium was one of the ingredients.
Homer's Odyssey, S. 221, itnTirh;,"
&c. There is no positiveness here;
the allusion to the nepenthe is plain,
no matter whence Shakspeare derived
it, and Upton merely indicates the
source from which it must have origin¬
ally been derived. I think a critical
examination of the passages would lead
to a strong suspicion that Shakspeare
had Homer in his eye. The medica¬
ment flung into the bowl by Helen to
cheer her guests, was — anger-
banishing, one that could " minister
to a mind diseased tnviths, generally
interpreted as sorrow-chasing, that could
" pluck from the memory a deep-
rooted sorrow »axav Ir/Xîjfay a^avTíay
—oblivion-causing of all troubles ; that
would " raze out the written troubles of
the brain." " Give me the sweet ob¬
livious antidote," says Macbeth, " that
would cleanse the stufl'ed bosom of
that perilous stufl' that weighs upon the
heart it is here, says Homer, this
nepenthe would che« the tear from
flowing, even if father, brother, mother,
or son, were slaughtered before the
eyes of him who drinks the (pa¡yiíxav
imXr.écv, the oblivious antidote,—
" That nepenthes, which the wife of
Thone,
In Egypt, gave to Jove-born Helena."*
The coincidence of the passages is
so striking, that I think it im¬
possible that Shakspeare should not
have read this part of Homer, at least,
in the original or translation. There
was, in spite of Farmer's affected
doubt, no Chapman when Macbeth
was written to assist him ; but there
were some curious French translations,
and no lack of versions into the Latin.
With respect to the incident of Pa-
troclus, he might certainly have found
it in Barclay ; but he also might have
found it in Homer, and I much prefer
the latter supposition. Troilus and
Cressida seems, indeed, written as an
antagonism of the Homeric characters,
so marked and peculiar, as to leave a
strong impression that the originals
were studied. It would appear as if
Shakspeare was trying his strength
against Homer; as if he said, " "The
world has, for centuries, rung with the
fame of your Ulysses ; well I here stands
mine." He has, accordingly, produced
a character, comparable only with that
depicted by the great master himself,
and far surpassing the conceptions of the
Greek dramatists and Ovid, by all of
whom Ulysses is degraded. Both in
Shakspeare and Homer he is eminently
wise ; but in the former he appears,
as Dr. Johnson calls him, the calm
Ulysses ; in the latter, ever active : the
one is grave and cautious; the other
ready to embark in any adventure, in
undoubting reliance on his readiness
of expedient : the eloquence of the one
is didactic, as becomes a speaker in a
drama ; of the other, narrative, as suited
to the epic; the one is pre.scient, pro¬
viding against difficulties; the other
■TieXuT^iiras, certain to overcome them
when they arrive. Shakspeare could
not have written
" The glorious tale to King Alcinous
told,"
and he therefore did not attempt if.
Homer, if he had made the attempt,
could not have surpassed the wisdom
and the poetry of such speeches as
those in the third scene of the first act
of Troilus and Cressida ; such as " The
specialty of rule hath been neglected "
[how politically applicable to the events
* ComuB, V. 675, 6.
VOL. XX. NO, cxvii.
T
270
Dr. Farmer s Essay on
[September,
of the last few years!]; in tlie third
scene of the tiiird act, " Time hath, iny
lord, a wallet at his back or, indeed,
throughout the whole play. It ap¬
pears, I repeat, to be a studied an¬
tagonism; and, at all events, I think it
would not be far short of a miracle if
Shakspeare had not read in some
language the Iliad and the Odyssey,—
" the tale of Troy divine," as told by
him who, alone of the uninspired sons
of song, was his equal or superior.
4. " But whence have we the plot of
Timon, except from the Greek of
Lucian ?" Farmer ridicules this fancy ;
and I do not know who ever asserted
it. In the first place, it need not have
been derived from the Greek of Lucian ;
for Erasmus had translated Timon into
Latin many a year before Shakspeare
was born. In the second place, those
who have read the two limons well
know that, except in the one circum¬
stance of Timon's being a misanthrope,
who fled from society to the woods,
and there found some gold while dig¬
ging, there is nothing in common be¬
tween them. As for the conception of
the characters, they are distinct as the
poles asunder. The misanthrope of
Lucian is such as might be expected
from the pen of a smart, sarcastic lit¬
térateur, occupied with the petty cares,
and satirising the petty follies, of a
small prating circle, cooped up in a
literary town, reading over and over
again the one set of poets, or philoso¬
phers, or orators ; continually com¬
mentating, criticising, quibbling, jest¬
ing, wrangling, parodying, and never
casting an eye beyond their own
clique, the gossiping affairs of which
they deemed of prime importance.
Accordingly, the Greek Timon opens
his imprecation to Jupiter wiili a bead-
roll of poetical epithets, and a sneer at
the contrivances of metremongers ; and
continues, in a strain of sarcasm di¬
rected as much against the mytho¬
logical fables, in Lucian's day falling
every where into disrepute, as against
mankind. Much time is then spent in
witty dialogues between Jupiter, Mer¬
cury, and Plulus, on the difficulty of
acquiring or retaining wealth, and its
unequal distribution, written in the
manner of gay comedy. When Timon
is again invested with riches, he fulmi¬
nates a misanthropical decree against
the human race ; but his curses are little
more than a somewhat extravagant ba¬
dinage, His very first words betoken the
author; they are parodies on the poets,
things uppermost in the mind of the rhe¬
torician, the lecturer, and the reviewer ;
but which certainly would not occur to
the mind of a man stung to madness
by his injuries,—run xttKUf,
as he himself says, and rejoicing in the
name ofhater of man (*«1 htofia ¡íit Xsru
Ú MiXANernnos rihrm) ; though he
tells us that he is to look upon men
but as statues of stone or brass, which
cannot be objects of hatred. He is to
feast by himself, to sacrifice by him¬
self, to put the funeral crown upon him-
selfafter he is dead. These mere jocu¬
larities are cast in the appropriate form
of a mock-decree. He is then visited
by a trencher-friend, who had deserted
him when he could keep no table;
and an ungrateful fellow, whom he
had assisted in affluence, and who ne¬
glected him in poverty. These, surely,
are no uncommon cases ; and they are
treated in a sketchy, light, burlesque
manner, probably with some real indi¬
viduals in view. Then (for the con¬
stant objects of Lucianic satire must
come at last) appear an orator, with a
farcical decree ; and a philosopher, with
a parody on a philosophic lecture.
These were the classes of mankind
great in Lucian's eyes, and on them he
always expends the utmost vigour of
his satiric rage. Timon very properly
kicks all these people out, and so ends
the petite comédie.
It answered, I suppose, the purpose
for which its author intended it. The
priests were no doubt angry or amused ;
they had a more dangerous and deadly
foe at hand, in the resistless march of
Christianity, to be seriously annoyed
by mere squibs. The orators and phi¬
losophers, sketched under the names
of Demeas and Tiirasycles (the latter
is evidently drawn from the life), and
the real persons (if any) who were in¬
tended by Gnathonides and Philiades,
were in all probability as indignant on
the appearance of the lively lampoon,
and complained as bitterly of the licen¬
tiousness of libellous MSS., as the vic¬
tims of witty newspapers or magazines
in our own days inveigh against the
licentiousness of a libellous press. The
style is gay and sprightly ; its observa¬
tions, shrewd and pleasant; and the
sketches, graphic and close to life.
But what have they in common with
the harrowing creation of the Shak-
spearian Timon? What are Lucian's
angriest denunciations but childish
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
271
trifling, compared with the curse upon
Athens with wiiich the fourth act of
the English misanthrope opens?—the
desperate prayer, that matrons should
be unchaste, children disobedient, au¬
thority spurned, virginity turned to tilth
and shamelessness, poverty scoffed at,
murder, theft, pillage, made the regular
order of human conduct ?
" Maid, to thy master's bed ;
Thy mistress is o' the brothel !—son of
sixteen,
Pluck tlie lin'd crutch from the old
limping sire ;
With it beat out his brains ! Piety and
fear,
lleligion to the gods, peace, justice,
truth.
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neigh¬
bourhood.
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and
trades.
Degrees, observances, customs, and
laws.
Decline to your confounding con¬
traries.
And yet confusion live !"
Shakspeare did not find any thing like
this in jesting Lucian. Again, compare
the Greek Timon's exclamation on find¬
ing the gold, with the parallel passage
in Shakspeare, or contrast the visitors
sent to each. I have already enume¬
rated those of Lucian — triflers all. To
the other Timon come the broken mi¬
litary adventurer, at war with his coun¬
try ; and he is counselled to spare none
—not age, sex, youth, infancy, holiness,
wretchedness, all being equally infa¬
mous and detestable ; and that task
done, having made
" Large confusion, and thy fury spent.
Confounded be thyself!"
— tlie abandoned woman, strongly ad¬
vised to ply her profligate trade so as
to spread misery and disease;—the
rascal thief, whose profession is justi¬
fied on the ground that he is only
doing openly what all the rest of man¬
kind practises under seemly covers of
hypocritical observance :
" The laws, your curb and whip, in their
rougb power
Have uncheck'd theft. Love not your¬
selves ; away :
Rob one another. There's more gold :
Cut throats ;
All that you meet are thieves. To Athens,
. ®''*
Break open shops, [for] nothing can you
steal.
But thieves do lose it. Steal not less,
for this
I give you ; and gold confound you bow-
soever !
Amen."
Shakspeare found all this in Lucian,
just as much as he found it in anotiier
of ür. Farmer's authorities, J«cA: Drum's
Entertainment. There is no need for
contrasting the characters any furtlier.
I am very much of opinion, from Far¬
mer's suggesting the similarity at all,
that whether Shakspeare was indebted
to Lucian or not, the doctor had never
read the Greek dialogist—at least, with
any thing like attention.
Such, then, detailed at length, with
all its examples, is Dr. Farmer's argu¬
ment to prove that Shakspeare was
ignorant of Greek. Briefly summed up,
the whole will amount to this : That
some critics, especially Upton, have
been overzealous in tracing resemblances
of passages or phrases in Greek to what
we find in Shakspeare, which certainly
is no fault of the " old bard that, in
constructing his classical plays, instead
of reading the Greek of Plutarch,—
of which there might, perhaps, have
been a hundred copies in England,
during his life, — he consulted the
English translation of Sir Thomas
North, who, having copied the blunders
of Claude Amyot, was thereby the
means oftransferring a couple of trifling
errors to Jtdius Casar and Antony and
Cleopatra ; that because an invisible
poet, named Southern, had translated
Itonsard, who had translated Anacreon,
Shakspeare could not read even the
Latin translation of the Teian odes ;
that because in the Ship of Fooles is to
be found an incident referred to in the
Iliad, and in the Faerie Qucene, a de¬
scription of the Nepenilve of the Odys¬
sey, Shakspeare could not have known
any thing of Homer ; and, finally, that
as Lucian had written a light comedy on
Timon, those who supposed the deep
tragedy on the same subject in English
was dictated by the Greek, were very
much mistaken. And this is the pam¬
phlet which has, in the opinion of com¬
petent critics, " settled the question
for ever 1" It has settled one question
for ever,—that the mass of conceited ig¬
norance among the reading public and
272
Dr. Furniers Essay on
[September,
the ordinary critical rabble of tiie mid¬
dle of the last century was profusely
abundant.
Having dismissed tbe details of the
Greek question, I shall proceed to
consider the pivnß of Shakspcare's ig¬
norance of other languages. And,
first,—
[Dr. Maginn must stop here for this
month.—0. Y.]
NOTES.
(a) There is one piece of literary imitation or plagiarism, which Kurd would not
have remarked, if he had known of its existence. As it is somewhat curious, and
as relevant to Shakspeare as at least nine-tenths of the commentaries upon him, I
extract a notice of it from a literary paper now extinct [frase/-'« Literary Chronicle,
p. 265.]
" Steevens remarked, that nothing short of an act of parliament could conipel any
one to read the sonnets of Shakspeare ; a declaration highly to the credit of his taste,
and quite decisive as to his capability of properly editing the plays. It is certain,
however, that the sonnets are not very generally read, and the same fate has befallen
tbe prose works of Milton. Of this I cannot produce a more extraordinary proof than
what I find in D'Israeli's Quan-els of Authors. He has been speaking of the celebrated
controversy between Warburton and Lowth, and subjoins this note
" ' The correct and elegant taste of Lowth, with great humour, detected the
wretched taste in which Warburton's prose style was composed; he did nothing
more than print the last sentence of the Inquiry on Prodigies in measured lines, with¬
out, however, changing the place of a single word, and this produced some of the
most turgid blank verse ; Lowth describes it as the musa pedestris got on horseback
in high prancing style. I shall give a few lines only of the final sentence in this
essay :—
' Methinks I see her, like the mighty eagle
Renewing her immortal youth, and purging
Her opening sight at the unobstructed beams
Of our benign meridian sun, &c.'
All tbis will, as many other lines, stand word for word in the original prose of our
tasteless writer ; but to shew his utter want of even one imagination, his translations
in imitation of Milton's style, are precisely like this ridiculous prose.'
" ' We thought that tbe most famous passage in Milton's most famous English
prose work, the Areopagitica, must have been known to all readers of our language :
' Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong
man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle
muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam,
purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly
radiance,' &c. &c. ; and yet here we find Warburton pillaging without any acknow¬
ledgment, as if he were safe in its obscurity; and the 'correct and elegant' Lowth
treating it as wretched, turgid, and inharmonious bombast. Lowth, too, be it re¬
marked, was a grammarian of our language by profession ! And to wind up all,
here we have Warburton's plagiarism passed unknown, and Lowth's critique adopted
with due panegyric, by a painstaking and generally correct explorer of our antiquities
and our literary history—whose studies have, moreover, led him to the most careful
perusal of the literature and politics of the days of Charles I., to which he has devoted
so much historical attention.' "
(I/) In Amyot it was at first probably only a misprint, but I find it is continued
even in the editions of An. X. and XI. In Leonard Aretin, from whom he probably
translated, tbe word is correctly Lifcyte, as it appears in the edition of Gemusmus,
Lugdun. J552, vol. iii. p. 635. There might have been an earlier edition; for
Gemus-a/us says, in bis dedication, that he presents Plutarch " civitate Romana nmi
quidem nunc primo donatum, sed, Graecorum collatione exemplarium, mendis qu/e
merant permultœ, et valde graves detersis mirifice restitutum." This was the kind
of work which Fanner and critics of his caste seem to have expected from Shakspeare
— that he was to present North " Graecorum collatione exemplarium — mirifice
restitutum."
(c) " After all. The Double Falsehood is superior to Theobald. One passage, and
one only, in the whole play, he pretended to have written :
• Strike up my masters ;
But touch the strings with a religious softness ;
Teach Sound to languish through the night's dull ear,
Till Melancholy start from her lazy couch.
And Carelessness grow convert to" Attention.'
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
273
Tbese lines were particularly admired ; and his vanity could not resist the oppor¬
tunity of claiming them ; but his claim had been more easily allowed to any other
part of the performance."—Farmer. The poetry appears to me to be as dull as the
wit of the doctor. I subjoin Farmer's illustration of Milton from Donne, to shew
that if he had pleased to question Milton's learning, he might hare dune it in the
same way that he has questioned Shakspeare's. " You must not think mo infected
with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton's imitations :—
' The swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet.'"—Book vii. v. 438, &c.
" The ancient poets," says Mr. Richardson, " have not hit upon this beauty : so
lavish have they been of the beauty of the swan. Homer calls the swan long-necked,
•, but how much more piitor-esçue if he had arched this length of neck."
For this beauty, however, Milton was beholden to Donne -, whose name, I believe, at
present, is better known than his writings :—
" Like a ship 8l her full trim,
A Siran, so white that you may unto him
Compare all whitenesse, but himselfe to none.
Glided along ; and as he glided watch'd.
And with his arched neck this poore fish catch'd."
Progresse of the Soul, St. xxiv.
The arching of the neck is unquestionably to he found in Donne, but rowing the
oary feet comes from Silius Italiens .
" Hand secus Eridani stagnis, ripàve Caystri
Innatat albus olor, pronoque immobile corpus
Dat fiuvio, et pedibus tacitas eretnigat undas."
In the Farmer style of argument it would be easy to prove that Milton had never
read Silius, because he might have read Donne.
(d) Warburton was dead about a year before Malone ventured on any thing so
desperate as publishing the letter, though it had been found several years previously,
and then he prefaced it with a whining apology. See the history of the whole affair
in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 634 ; and Nichols's Illustrations of Literary
History, vol.ii. p. 195, where will be found a most extended correspondence of War-
burton, Theobald and Concanen. The sycophancy of Hurd to Warburton, Lit.
Anec. p. 635, on the subject of his former acquaintance with Concanen is sickening.
I wish somebody would arrange these hooks of Nichols's, they are full of the most
valuable matter, but presented in a manner so confused, as to render consulting them
a work of no .small puzzle.
(e) The only notice I know of Southern is in the European Magasine for June
1788, where, as the writer, though he must have known of Farmer's pamphlet, says
nothing of this translation of Ronsard, or Anacreon, it is probable that it does not
exist.
VOL. XX. NO. CXVIII. I I
476
Dr, Farmers Essay on
[October,
dr. farmer's essay on the learning of shakspeare
considered.
by william maginn, esq., ll.d.
(^Continued from p. 273.)
I was proceeding to say, when Mr.
Yorke, impatient of my inordinate
intrusion on his pages, abruptly cut
me short last montli, that I should
have somewhat more trouble with the
Latin part of Dr. Farmer's Essay than
with the Greek ; not from any potency
in the argument, or variety in the way
of putting it, but from the confused
and desultory manner in which his in.
stances and examples are brought for¬
ward. In the edition I am using
(Isáac Reed's, of 1813), where it oc-
copies the first eighty-six pages of the
second volume, the proofs to convict
Shakspeare of ignorance commence at
p. 34, and are brought to a close with
an exulting—" Thus much for the
learning of Shakspeare, with respect to
the ancient languages," at p. 73 ; but
these forty pages are far, indeed, from
being devoted to the proposed theme.
In them we find ample stores of miscel-
laneous information—such as that we
may venture to look into the Romaunt
of the Rose, " notwithstanding Master
Prynne hath so positively assured us,
on the word of John Gerson, that tire
author [Jehan de Mehun] is most cer¬
tainly damned, if he did not care for a
serious repentance that " poor Je¬
han had raised the expectations of a
monastery in France, by the legacy of a
great chest, and the weighty contents of
it ; but it proved to be filled with no¬
thing but vetches on which the friars
refused him Christian burial : that if
" our zealous puritan [Prynne] had
known of this, he would not have
joined in the clamour against him
that Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
" literally stole [an epigram] from
Angerianus, as he appears in the De-
litia; Ital. Poet., by Gruter, under the
anagrammatic name of ' Ranutius
Gherus'" 1608, vol. i. p. 189 [which,
it must be admitted, is at least as
sounding a piece of learning as
Upton's dimeter trochaic brachyca-
talectic, commonly called ithyphallic,
which excites so much of Farmer's
jocularity] : that " such biographers
as Theophilus Gibber and the writer
of the life of Sir Philip (Sydney)
prefixed to the modern editions," are
wrong in assigning the date of 1613 to
the Arcadia, Dr. Farmer himself hav¬
ing actually a copy in his own possess¬
ion, " printed for W, Ponsonbie, 1590,
4to., which hath escaped the notice of
the industrious Ames, and the rest of
our typographical antiquaries that
" Mr. Uriy, probably misled by his
predecessor, Speght," was wrong in
being determined, Procrustes-like, to
force every line in the Canterbury
Tales to the same standard, the atten¬
tion of our old poets being " directed
to the casural pause, as the grammarians
call it;" [Upton again 1] that Mr. Me¬
nage quotes a canon upon us,—" Si
quis dixerit episcopum podagra la¬
borare, anathema sit that Skelton, in
his rambling manner, gives a curious
character of Wolsey, which is made a
peg whereon to hang a note upon Skel¬
ton himself and his laureateship : that
Mr. Garrick is " a gentleman, who will
always be allowed the ßrst commen¬
tator on Shakspeare, when he does
not carry us beyond himself," which,
to use the language of one of Lady
Morgan's heroes, in (I forget what
novel) is " mighty nate that Mr.
Ames, who searched after books of
this sort with the utmost avidity, had
not seen " the two tomes, which Tom
Rawlinson would have called justa
Volumina," of W. Painter's Palace of
Pleasures, " when he published his
Typographical Antiquities, as appears
from his blunders about them ; and
possibly I myself" [even 11] " might
have remained in the same predica¬
ment, had I not been favoured with a
copy by my generous friend Dr. Lort
that he " must correct a remark in the
Life of Spenser, which is impotently
levelled at the first critics of the age,"
in the Biographia Britannica, follow¬
ed by a dissertation on the date of
Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata, intro-
d uced chiefly to " assu re the biographer,"
who assigns it to 1583, " that I have
met with at least six other editions
preceding his date of the first publica¬
tion that Gabriel Harvey desired only
to be " epitaph'd the inventor of the
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspcare considered.
English hexameter," and for a wlille
every one would be halting on Roman
feet : that the ridicule of our fellow-
collegian, Hall, in one of his satires,
and the reasoning of Daniel, in his
Defence ef Rhgme against Campion,
presently reduced us to our original
Gothic : that he had met with a facetious
piece ofSir John Harrington, printed in
1596 (and possibly there was an earlier
edition), called the Metamorphosis of
Ajax : that " A Compendious or Brief
Examination of Certayne Ordinary Com¬
plaints, &c., by William Shakspeare,
gentleman," reprinted in 1751, was
falsely attributed to our author ; " I
having at last met with the original
edition," and with great ingenuity dis¬
covered that it was the composition of
William Stafford : that " poor Antony"
— he means Antony Wood—had too
much reason for his character of Au¬
brey (a),—with an abundance of more
stuff of the same kind, curious perhaps
occasionally, and calculated to inspire
us with due reverence for the biblio¬
graphical industry and acumen of Dr.
Farmer, but having no more connexion
with the question, whether Shakspeare
knew Latin or not, than it has with the
quadrature of the circle. And even
where we find points adduced which
do bear upon that question, they are
urged in so rambling and discursive a
manner, that it is scarcely possible to
meet them without being tediously
diffusive upon petty trifles.
His Latin task opens thus :—
" Perhaps the advocates for Sbak-
speare's knowledge of the Latin language
may be more successful. Mr. Oildon
takes the van. ' It is plain, that he was
acquainted with the fables of antiquity
very well : that some of the arrows of
Cupid are pointed with lead, and others
with gold, he found in Ovid; and what
he speaks of Dido, in Virgil : nor do I
know any translation of these poets so
ancient as Shakspeare's time.' The
passages on which these sagacious re¬
marks are made occur in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, and exhibit, we see, a
clear proof of acquaintance with the
Latin classics. But we are not answer¬
able for Mr. Gildon's ignorance. He
might have been told of Caxton and
Douglas, of Surrey and Stanyhurst, of
Phaer and Twyne, of Fleming and Gold-
ing, of Turberville and Churchyard !
But these fables were easily known,
without the help of either the originals
or the translations. The fate of Dido
had been sung very early by Gower,
Chaucer, and Lydgate ; Marlowe had
even already introduced her to the stage ;
and Cupid's arrows appear with their
characteristic differences in Surrey, in
Sidney, in Spenser, and every sonnetteer
of the time. Nay, theirvery names were
exhibited long before in The Romaunt of
the Rose."
Farmer upsets here the argument of
his pamphlet, when he says that we are
not to be answerable for the ignorance
of Oildon. Of course we are not ;
neither is Shakspeare. It may be true
that Dr. Farmer had read more, and
was better acquainted with literature in
general, and particularly in its anti¬
quarian departments, than Oildon. It
would be strange, indeed, if the libra¬
rian of Cambridge (fc), living among
books, and easy of fortune, did not in
such particulars surpass a poor hack-
critic (Farmer, of course, does not forget
to remind us of his " ill-starred rage "
against Dennis) (c) writing for his bread,
and picking information at the scantiest
(a) " It is therefore sufficiently clear, that poor Anthony had too much reason for
bis character of Aubrey. Y ou will find it in his own account of his life, published by
Heame, which I would earnestly recommend to any hypocliondriack :—
" ' A pretender to antiquities, roving, magotie-headed, and sometimes little better
than erased; and being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many letters sent to
A. W. with follines and misformations.'"—P. 577.
(Jo) I find I have made a mistake in saying, in the last Number of this Magazine,
that Dr. Farmer, when he wrote his Essay, had the advantage of being able to
consult a great library, in consequence of his being principal librarian of Cambridge.
The Essay was published in 1766, and the Doctor was not appointed protobibliothe-
carius of the university until 1778. But he was always a library-haunter; and, of
course, whether libraran or not. the literary stores of Cambridge were at bis service.
We are also told in the Annual Necrology, quoted by Nichols in the History of Leicester¬
shire, vol. iv. p. 944, that he had gathered by sixpenny purchases at bookstands " an
immense number of books, good, bad, and indifferent." The catalogue of his library
contains many curious articles.
(c) After saying, in the text of his Essay, " one of the first and most vehement
assertors of the learning of Shakspeare was the editor of his poems, the well-known
Mr. Gildon," he adds in a note, " Hence, perhaps, the illstarred rage between this
478
Dr. Farmers Essay on
[October,
sources ; but, I repeat, how can the li¬
terary distance between Gildon and
Farmer affect Shakspeare?
A gentleman of the name of Charles
Armitage Brown published, last year,
a volume called Shakespeare's Autobio¬
graphical Poems {d), one chapter of which
IS dedicated to the question of his learn¬
ing ; and in this I find a fair remark
upon the passage I have just extracted
from Farmer's Essay: " His (Siiak-
speare's) frequent appropriate use of the
heathen mythology, and of the classical
heroes, has been brought forward as
evidence of his learning ; but, as Dr.
Farmer has shewn, that knowledge
might have been gained, as well as
now, without Greek or Latin. Yet,
had he displayed ignorance on these
subjects, he might be proved somewhat
unlearned." Unquestionably; and he
must have been exposed to perpetual
blundering, if he never drew elsewhere
than at second-hand. Dr. Farmer has
proved no more than that Shakspeare
might have learned his Pagan lore from
English authorities. Granted ; but it
is strange logic to argue that therefore
he was incapable of learning it any
where else. I do not know who taught
the art of syllogism at Cambridge in
Dr. Farmer's time ; but certainly nei¬
ther " German Crouzaz, nor Dutch
Bursgersdyck "(e) could refrain from
crying negatur to the minor which
would lead to such a conclasio.
As the page or two following
the sentences above taken from Mr.
Brown has a direct reference to the
question we are discussing, 1 continue
the extract ;—
" Accordingly, the annotators have
brought forward no less than three ex¬
amples of this ignorance, which, happily,
at least two of them, prove nothing but
the ignorance of his critics. The first is
in Henry IV., Part II., where Hecuba's
dream of a firebrand is called Althea's,—
a mistake certainly, hut one which rather
proves he was acquainted with both
stories. Besides, Ur. Johnson, who
notices it, ought to have remembered, as
an editor, a line in Henry VI., Part II.,
which Shakspeare, if he did not write it.
must have well known, and which proves
he was aware of the nature of Althea's
brand :
' As did the fatal brand Althea bum'd.'
" Henley brings forward the second
example from Macbeth, thus annotating
on the words ' Bellona's bridegroom —
• This passage may be added to the many
others, which shew how little he knew of
ancient mythology.' 'I'he many others I
—where are they? In the mean time,
why is Henley's classic lore offended ?
Is it because he had never heard, among
the ancients, of Bellona's bridegroom?
Alas ! it was Macbeth himself the
poet meant! Had he been termed, in
bis capacity of a soldier, a son of Mars,
the liberty would have been as great ;
but, owing to the triteness of the
appellation, not to be cavilled at as a
proof of ignorance, though it would have
made the doughty Thane of Glamis the
brother of Cupid. What Shakspeare said,
poetically said, was, that the warlike hero
was worthy of being the bridegroom of
the goddess of war. This is the passage :
' Norway himself, with terrible numbers.
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor
The Thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal
conflict ;
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in
proof.
Confronted him with self-comparisons.
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst
arm.
Curbing his lavish spirit.'
" Stevens gives us the third proof
of ignorance, in these lines from the
Merchant of Venice:
' In such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand.
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her
love
To come again to Carthage.'
' This passage,' quoth Stevens, in a mat¬
ter-of-fact note, ' contains a small in¬
stance, out of many that might be brought,
to prove that Shakspeare was no reader
of the classics.' Out of many that might
be brought ! Why not bring them ? And
why was this brought ? Purely because
Virgil did not describe Dido with a willow
in her hand ? Stevens ought to have
known, according to Virgil, that Dido
was forsaken by her lover, and that the
critick and his elder brother, John Dennis, so pathetically lamenled in the Dunciad."
The verses referred to are,—
" Ah, Dennis I Gildon, ah ! what ill-starred rage
Divides a friendship long confirmed by age ?"—Dunciad, b, iii. v. 173, 4.
(d) Shakspeare's Autobiographical Poems. Being his Sonnets clearly developed :
with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works. By Charles Armitage Brown.
London, 1838. Bohn. l3mo. Pp. 306.
(e) Dunciad, b. iv. v. 198.
i «39.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
479
giving ter the allegorical willow was
nothing more nor less than a poetical
description of her love-lorn state. As
for the other instances, I have not found
them,—the • many others,' and the
• many that might be brought.' These
critics remind me of the drunken ma¬
gistrate, who, seeing himself in a look¬
ing-gla^s at the moment he expected a
criminal to be brought before him, cried
out : ' Ah, thou caitiff! many a time and
oft hast thou been brought before me I' "
On this I may observe : 1. That
the quotation from Henry VI. is de¬
cisive that Shakspeare did know the
history of Althea's brand ; but, if we
refer to the passage in Henry IV., vie
shall see that it was not by any means
necessary that he should exhibit his
learning there :—
" Bard. Away, you whoreson upright
rabbit, away !
Page. Away, you rascally Althea's
dream, away I
P. Hen. Instruct us, boy : W hat dream,
hoy 1
Page. Marry, my lord, Althea dreamed
she was delivered of a firebrand ; and
therefore I call him her dream."—Act ii.
sc. 2.
The prince is so much enraptured
with this " good interpretation," that
he gives the boy a crown as a reward.
The blunder is evidently designed ;
and Shakspeare is as much answer¬
able for the degree of mythological
learning displayed by the page, as for
the notions of grammatical propriety
entertained by Mrs. Quickly. 1 think,
however, that Mr. Brown is wrong in
ascribing to Dr. Johnson any desire of
bringing this supposed error forward to
aid the cause of proving Shakspeare
unlearned.
2. That Henley's observations on Bel-
lona's bridegroom are absurd, and Mr.
Brown's comment is indisputably cor¬
rect. Let me take, or make, this op¬
portunity for saying, that Dr. Farmer
informs us, " as for the play of Macbeth
itself, it hath lately been suggested,
from Mr. Guthrie's Essay on English
Tragedy, that the portrait of Macbeth's
wife is copied from Buchanan, whose
spirit, as well as words, is translated
into tlie play of Shakspeare ; and it
had signified nothing to have pored
only on Uolinshed ior facts." Farmer
very truly remarks, that there is nothing
in Buchanan to justify this assertion :
" ' Animus etiam, prae se ferox, prope
quotidianis conviciis uxoris (quae om¬
nium consiiiorum ei erat consola) sti-
mulabatur.' This is the whole that
Buchanan says of the lady." Shak¬
speare undoubtedly took the story from
Holinshed, who had abridged it from
Bellenden's translation of The noble
Clerk, Hector Boece, as Farmer is able
to prove by the salutation of the
witches being given in the tragedy,
not as in Buchanan, but as it appears
in Holinshed, after Bellenden, who fol¬
lows Boetius (f). Yet if we could sup¬
pose that Shakspeare looked beyond the
English version, we might discover an
authority for mending some halting
lines in the play, which have occupied
its critics ; as, for example :—
" Where the place Î
Upon the heath.
There to meet with Macbeth."
Now, this lame line should be what
Upton would call a trochaic dimeter
catalectic, and not brachycatalectic ;
and accordingly Pope, not, indeed,
consulting the learned labours of the
prosodian, but his own ear, altered it
to—
" There I go to meet MacbetK."
And Capell proposes :
" There to meet with brave Macbeth."
And again :
" Dismayed not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
Yes."
Stevens remarks that some word,
necessary to complete the verse, has
been omitted in the old copy ; and
Sir Thomas Hanmer proposes, " Our
captains, brave Macbeth," &c. If the
word were allowed to be pronounced
if) " We can demonstrate that Shakspeare had not the story from Buchanun.
According to him, the weird sisters salute Macbeth, ' Una Angusiae I hanum, altera
Moraviae, tertia regem. Thane of Angus, and of Murray, fxc. j but according to
Holinshed, immediatfly from Bellenden, as it stands in Shakspeare, " The first of
them spake and sayde, ' All hayle, Alakbeth, thane of Glammis ;' the second of them
said, ' Hayle, Makbeth, thane of Cawdor but the third said, ' All hayle, Makbeth, that
hereafter shall be King of Scotland." "—Pp. 243.
" 1. Witch. AU hail, Alacbeth I Hail to thee, thane of Glammis I
2. Witch. All hail, Macbeth I Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor I
3. Witch. All hail, Macbeth I that shall be king hereafter."
480
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[October,
as a trisyllable, it would suit the metre
in the above-quoted lines, and else¬
where :—
" There to meet with Mac-a-beth."
" Our captains, Mac-a-beth and Banquo 1
Yes."
In Uolinshed the word is Makbeth ;
but Fordun, his remote authority, as
being the authority of Hector Boeihius,
calls him Machabeus sive Machabeda.
In Stevens's notes will be found a
passage, extracted from the Scoto Chro-
nicon, in which the latter spelling oc¬
curs : " Subito namque post mortem
Machabeda, convenerunt quidam ex
ejus parentela," &c. I do not insist
on this trifle, to maintain that Shak-
speare made the Scolo Chronicon his
study — I should, indeed, be very much
astonished if he had ; but it is as strong
an evidence of his having done so, as
atty of Farmer's can be allowed to be
proofs that he had not consulted any
authors but those which were to be
found in English.
But if I care little for the learning or
the logic of Dr. Farmer, I own I care
less for such criticism as that of Mr.
Guthrie. I have never seen his Essay
on English Tragedy, and assuredly
shall not look for it, being quite satis¬
fied as to the ability and discrimination
of the critic who discovers that Shak-
speare copied the portrait of Lady
Macbeth from Buchanan, or any one
else. There certainly is something
graphic in the sentence above quoted
from the poetic historian, describing
in few words the naturally ferocious
mind of Macbeth, spurred on by
the fierce reproaches which his wife,
intimately conscious of all his designs,
urged against him almost day by
day ; but the conception of such a
character, though less prosaic than
that in Holinshed, who tells us that
she " lay sore upon her husband, to
attempt the thing, as she that was
very ambitious, brenning in unquench¬
able desire to bear the name of
queene," is lower ten thousand fathoms
deep than that of the Lady Macbeth of
Shakspeare. She is, in truth, the sti¬
mulated, not the stimulator—the fol¬
lower, not the leader, of her husband's
designs—sacrificing her feelings and
affections, unsexing herself to promote
his cherished ambition — hoping that
his first crime was to be the last —
frightened and broken-hearted, when
she finds him determined on wading
remorselessly through murder—sub¬
mitting in terrified silence to his san¬
guinary projects — clinging to him,
in desperate fidelity, during his ruin¬
ed fortunes, and his detested career,
and inspiring even his bloody nature
with its last human feeling—shield¬
ing her remorse from human eye as
long as she has power to conceal
her thoughts, but manifesting it in
bitter agony when diseased sleep de¬
prives her of control over her move¬
ments— and finally dying, amid the
wail of women, at the moment when
fate had unrelentingly determined that
her husband should perish amid accu¬
mulated horrors. If this lady is found
by Guthrie portrayed in Buchanan,
then, great as were the talents of him
" Whose bonour'd bones
Are laid 'neath old Greyfriars' stones "(g),
I can only say that he never found any
thing like such power of portraiture
or poetry in himself. The story of
Macbeth might have been suggested
by the classical Latin of Buchanan, or
the homely English of Holinshed ; but
Lady Macbeth was suggested by an
inspiration not derived from annalist
or historian.
3. That the willow of Dido is pro¬
perly explained by Mr. Brown. Ste¬
vens's note is stark nonsense. In Virgil,
Dido is described as endeavouring to
persuade .®neas to return to her, after
the canvass had invoked the breeze—
" Puppibus et laeti nautas imposuere
coronas."
It would be idle to quote at length the
story of Dido's sorrows, which every
body has by heart ; it is enough to say
that the lines spoken by Lorenzo, in the
Merchant of Venice, are no more than
a picturesque condensation of what we
find in Virgil (.íEn. iv. 296-590) —
as descriptive of the struggles of Dido
to retain her faithless lover—her wo
when she saw his preparations for de¬
parture on the wild sea bank —
" Toto properari littore circum
Undique convenere," &c.
and her endeavours, through Anna (as
the willow of her hand), to wave him
back 10 Carthage. Mr. Brown, however,
is mistaken, if he thinks that no more
than the three passages which he has
(g) George Buchanan is buried in the Greyfriars' Church in Edinburgh.
1839.] the Learning of Shakspeare considered, 481
here selected, as specimens of im¬
pertinent airs of superiority in learn¬
ing over Shakspeare, are ail that can
be found in Stevens, and other com¬
mentators of similar grade. I could,
without exaggeration, produce a hun¬
dred other impertinences equally
flagrant y but I must get on for the
present with Dr. Farmer.
Whaliey observes, that when in the
Tempest, it is said,
" High queen of state,
Great Juno comes; 1 know her by her
gait,"
the allusion is to the divûm incedo
regina of Virgil. Bishop Warburton
thinks that, in the Merchant of Venice,
the oath, " by two - headed Janus,"
shews Shakspeare's knowledge of the
antique ; " and, quoth Dr. Sewell,
Shakspeare hath somewhere a Latin
motto" (which, by the way, is a very
dishonest manner of quoting) : are not
these some proofs of Shakspeare's
knowledge? " No," says Dr. Far¬
mer, " they are not; because Taylor,
the water poet, alludes to Juno's port
and majesty, and the double face of
Janus ; and has besides a Latin motto,
and a whole poem upon it into the
bargain."
" You perceive, my dear sir," con¬
tinues Farmer, " how vague and in¬
determinate such arguments must be;
for, in fact, this sweet swan of Thames,
as Mr. Pope calls him, hath more
scraps of Latin, and allusions to an¬
tiquity, than are any where to be met
with in the writings of Shakspeare. I
am sorry to trouble you with trifles, yet
what must be done when grave men
insist upon them ?"
What must be done, indeed, when
we find that a grave man insists upon
it, that the confessedly casual acquaint¬
ance at second-hand (A) with the class¬
ical mythology displayed by Taylor
should be a proof that the knowledge
of Shakspeare, or of any body else,
is necessarily of the same description?
Burns made no pretension to an ac¬
quaintance with Greek or Latin, and yet
we can find abundance of allusions to
the heathen gods and goddesses in his
poems. Is that a reason for believing.
because we have the same allusions in
Lord Byron, that his lordship had no
means of consulting the originals in
which those deities are native ?
This, I should say in any ease, but
there is a peculiar dishonesty in the
reference of Farmer's L'ssqy (dishonesty
of one kind or other is, indeed, its
characteristic throughout) to Warbur-
ton's note on " two-headed Janus."
In the Merchant of Venice, act i. sc. 1.,
Salanio (as the name of the character
is commonly spelt) says, jesting upon
Antonio's unexplainable sadness, that
they might
" Say you are sad.
Because you are not merry; and 'twere
as easy
For you to laugh, and leap, and say you
are merry.
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-
headed Janus,
Nature hath formed strange fellows in
her time ;"—
some, in short, that will laugh, and
others that will weep, without any as¬
signable cause. On which Warburton
remarks,—
" Here Shakspeare shews his know¬
ledge in the antique. By two-headed
Janus is meant those antique, bifron-
tine heads, which generally represent a
young and smiling face, together with
an old and wrinkled one, being of Pan
and Bacchus, of Saturn and Apollo, &c.
These are not uncommon in collections
of antiques ; and in the books of the
antiquaries, as Montfaucon, Spanheim,
&c."
I do not know that there was much
learning requisite to discover this; but
the illustration of Bishop Warburton
is elegant, and, to all appearance, just.
The mere double face in the Water
poet is what may occur to any looker
upon a picture of.lanus; but the fair
aspect of the beauteous Apollo on
one side, while tlte other exhibits the
wrinkled visage of Saturn, suggests a
poetical type of a man melancholy
and gay by turns, for no other reason
save the pleasure of the maker who
" formed so strange a fellow."
When Dodd refers Rumour painted
full of tongues to the description of
•
(ft) Taylor tells us that when he got from possum to posset, be could not get any
further. í his must be intended as a piece of wit ; for if he got as far as possum at
all, he must have passed through sum and its inflections ; and there is no more difficulty
in proceeding from posset to possemus, than from esset to essemus, and so forth. The
posset of Taylor is, I suspect, a sack-posset. He forsook the Grammar in which he
found the possum, for the bowl in which he found the pcsset.
482
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[October,
Fame in Ovid or Virgil, we are re¬
minded that she has been represented
by Stephen Hawes in his Pastyme of
Pleasure, as
" A goodly lady envyroued about
With tongues of fire
that something of the same kind is to
be found in Sir Thomas More's Pa¬
geants; in her elabórale portrait by
Chaucer in the Book of Fame ; and in
John Higgins's Legend of King AÍ-
banacte. I do not think it was neces¬
sary that Shakspeare should have read
Virgil or Ovid, Hawes or Higgins,
More or Chaucer, to borrow from them
so obvious an idea as that of bedecking
the representative of Rumour in a
garment painted with tongues ; which
was, indeed, his ordinary attire, as
in the pageant of Henry VIII., de¬
scribed by Holinshed, and of James I.
described by Decker (see the notes of
Warton and Stevens on the Induc¬
tion of the Second Part t^' Henry IV.).
Dodd's learning, therefore, was mis¬
placed ; but it proves nothing against
the learning of Shakspeare. Rabelais
{Pantagruel, lib. v. cap. 31) furnishes
a somewhat analogous person to Ru¬
mour; namely, Ouidire, with an innu¬
merable quantity of ears(i), as well as
tongues. A critic like Dr. Dodd might
suggest that this too was borrowed from
the Fame of Virgil;—■
" Oui, quot sunt corpore plumee,
• • • • •
Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subri-
git aures."—iv. 181-3.
And if a critic like Farmer found any
thing of the same kind in a French
poet, of or before the times of the far-
famed romance of Gargantua and Panta¬
gruel, even in Rominagrobis himself, he
might, in perfect consistency with the
argument of this " celebrated Essay,"
maintain that the humourist did not
find his prototype in Latin, but in
French; and, therefore, because the
former critic was mistaken, that Rabe¬
lais was incapable of reading Virgil. The
same observation applies to Farmer's
reply to a remark made by the author of
The Beauties of Poetry, who says that
he " cannot but wonder, that a poet,
whose classical images are composed of
the finest parts, and breathe the very
spirit of ancient mythology, should pass
for being illiterate :
' See what a grace was seated on his
brow !
Hyperion's curls (fc) : the front of Jove
himself:
An eye like Mars to threaten and com¬
mand :
A station like the herald Mercury,
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.' "
Hamlet,
" Illiterate," says Farmer, " is an
ambiguous term : the question is whe¬
ther poetic history would be only known
by an adept in languages." It cer¬
tainly can, though by no means so
easily in the time of Queen Elizabeth
as in ours, when English literature
alone will supply as much of such his¬
tory as can be obtained by the most
diligent reader of the Greek and Roman
poets. Farmer refers us to Stephen
Bateman's Golden Booke of the Leaden
Got/s, 1577, and several other laborious
compilations on the subject ; and adds,
that " all this, and much more mytho¬
logy might as perfectly have been
learned from the Testament of Creseide
and the Faerie Queenezs from a regular
Pantheon, or Polymates himself." This
is true enough (though I certainly do
not believe that Shakspeare ever read
a line of Bateman's work, which might
more appropriately be styled, the
Leaden Book of the Golden Gods) ; but
even the FaeneQueenecould not supply
any picture so truly imbued with a
classical taste, and breathing the very
style and manner of the classics,
as the passage from Hamlet. Com¬
pare it with Phaer's version of Virgil,
quoted by Malone ; and it will be seen
that Shakspeare, who appears to have
(Í) In the chapter. Comment au pays de Satin nous veismes Ouidire tenant eschole da
tesmoignerie: " Sans plus sejoumer nous transportâmes on lieu ou cestoit, et veismes
ung petit viellard bossu, contrefaict et monstreux, on le nomme Ouïdire : il avoit la
gueule fenduë jusques aulx aureilles, dedans la gueule sept langues, et chasque
langue fenduë eu sept parties : quoyque ce feust, de toutes sept ensemblement par¬
loir divers propos, et languiges divers : avoit aussi parmy la teste, et le reste du
corps aultant d'aureilles comme jadis eut Argus d'yeulx."
(k) Farmer remarks that Hyperion is used with the same error in quantity by
Spenser. It would be a piece of mere affectation to pronounce the word otherwise
in English ; and even in <1 reek the iota is lengthened only through the necessity of
the hexameter in which it could not otherwise have a place. The iota of 7*» is short.
1839.] the Learning of Shakspeare considered. 483
had in his mind Mercury's descent
upon Mount Âtlas, in the fourth JEneid,
has seized the spirit of the Romau
poet better than his translator
" And now approaching neere, the top he
Seeth and mighty lims
Of Atlas mountain tough, that heaven on
boyst'rous shoulders beares.
There first on ground with wings of
might doth Mercury arrive ;
Then down from thence, right over seas,
himselfe doth headlong drive."
The original is :—
" Jamque volans apicem et latera ardua
cemit
Atlantis duri, cœlum qui vertice fulcit.
• • • »
Hie primum, paribus nitens Cyllenius
alis,
Constitit."—Mmid, iv. 246-253.
" Paribus alis" are not " wirigs of
might," as Phaer translates them ; on
the contrary, the wings of Mercury are
the lightest in the whole plumage of
mythology ; easy, as Home Tooke
makes Sir Francis Burdett say (Z), to be
taken off, and not, like those of other
winged deities,making part of his body.
Nor does " then first on ground doth
Mercury arrive" convey the idea ex¬
pressed in " consliiil." The airy and
musical metre of Hamlet brings before
us no heavy-winged god ; and Shak¬
speare, by his peculiar use of the
word station, gives us the very phrase¬
ology of Virgil, exhibiting, as in a
picture or statue, the light but vigorous
figure of Mercury, newly descended
from heaven, and standing in the full-
developed grace of his celestial form as
the herald of the gods, not arriving, as
per coach or train, on the summit of a
heaven-kissing hill. I think it more
probable that Shakspeare had his
images directly from Virgil, not from
Phaer ; and if he substituted the pic¬
turesque word " heaven-kissing hill"
for the harsher description of rough and
aged Atlas, in the ^neid, it is because,
in speaking of his father, Hamlet did
not choose to use any other expressions
than those of majesty, elegance, and
beauty.
I own that I am growing weary, and
I fear that the same feeling extends to
my readers, if any have had patience to
get so far, of this peddling work. I
shall not, therefore, meddle with Dr.
Farmer's correction ofUpton, for alter¬
ing hangman to " henchman — a page,
pusio," in what Don Pedro says of
Benedicfc(»t) [not Benedict, as Farmer
by an ordinary mistake calls him] :
(Í) Diversions of Purley. Parti, ch. i. in Richard Taylor's edition of 1829, vol. i.
p. 26. " These are the artificial wings of Mercury, by means of which the Argus eyes
of philosophy have been cheated.
" ' H. It is my meaning.
" ' jB. Well. We can only judge of your opinion after we have heard how you
maintain it. Proceed, and strip.him of his wings. They seem easy enough to he
taken off ; for it strikes me now, after what you have said, that they are indeed put
on in a peculiar manner, and do not, like those of other wiuged deities, make a part of
his body. You have only to loose the strings from his feet, and take off his cap.'"
(m) " In Much Ado ahmt Nothing, Don Pedro says of the insensible Benedict, ' He
hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's how-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at
him.'
" This mythology is not recollected in the ancients, and therefore the critic hath
no doubt but his author wrote ' Henchman—a page, pusio : and this word seeming too
hard for the printer, he translated the little urchin into a hangman, a character no
way belonging to him.'
" But this character was not borrowed from the ancients, it came from the Arcadia
of Sir Philip Sydney :—
' JMillions of years this old drivell, Cupid, lives ;
While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove ;
Till now at length that Jove an office gives
(At Juno's suite who much did Argus love),
« In this our World a hangman for to be
Of all-fliose fooles tbat will bave all they see.'"—B. ii. c. 14.
So far Parmer. 1 quote the passage from Sir Philip, chiefly for the benefit of
those who delight in nicknaming Lord Palmerston, Cupid, and alluding to his peren¬
nial tenacity to office. It inav serve also to describe the vigour of his government,
as well as the improvement made in his administration by length of time ; while his
late connexion with Maroto would seem to indicate that he is qualifying for the last
office here assigned to Cupid.
484
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[October,
nor with bis discovery that Shakspeare
might have been indebted for
" Most sure the goddess
On whom those airs attend "(«)
to Stanyhurst's translation. " No
doubt a godesse," as well as to the
original, " 0 dea, certe nor with his
now superseded black-leiter reading of
the Hyslorie of Hamblei, by which he
overthrows the sage suspicions of Dr.
Grey and Mr. Whalley, that Shak-
speare must have read Saxo Grum-
maticus in the original Latin, " as no
translation had been made into any
modern language nor with his contro¬
versy with George Colman the elder, and
Bonnell Thornton, as to whether the
disguise of the Pedant, in the Taming
of t he Shrew, was taken from that of the
%cophanta, in the Trinummus, or on
Shakspeare's other obligations to Plau-
tus and Terence—nor with his proof
that the translations of some of Ovid's
Epistles, which were attributed to
Shakspeare, and considered (I know
not by whom) to be the sheet-anchor
by which his reputation for learning is
to hold fast, were in reality the work
of Thomas Hey wood — 1 shall do my¬
self the pleasure of passing by all these
wonderful things, leaving them without
comment to the judgment of the reader.
1 shall only notice the following points,
and that as briefly as I can :—
I. In the prologue of Troilus and
Cressida, the six gates of Troy are
called, in the folio—
" Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas,
Trojan,
And Antenonydus."
Theobald alters these to —
" Dardan and Thymbria, Ilia, Scasa,
Trojan,
And Antenorides,"
after Dares Phrygius, cap. iv. : " Ilio
portas fecit quorum nomina heec sunt,
Antenoridse, Dardanis, Iliae, Scsae,
Thymbrse«,Trojanae but Farmer re¬
fers to the Troy Boke of Lydgate,
where they are called Dardanydes,
Tymbria, Helyas, Cetheas, Trojana,
Anthonydes. In late editions, they
appear as
" Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas,
Trojan,
And Antenorides."
Agreeing with Dr. Farmer, that Shak¬
speare found them in Lyd^te, not in
Dares, I should prefer reading Cetheas
for Chetas, and Anthonydes (which is
not very far from the folio reading,
Antenonydus) for Antenorides—for that
would be more consonant with Shak¬
speare's usual method of exactly tran¬
scribing his originals. But I do not
agree with the Doctor, that Theobald's
having supposed it necessary that
Shakspeare should have read Dares,
is of any value in an argument to
prove the poet destitute of learning.
It merely proves that, in this instance
at least, Theobald was destitute of sense.
I have already expressed ray opinion,
that the play of Troilus and Cressida
was written as a sort of trial of strength
with Homer in the art of delineating
character; and, at all events, Shak¬
speare must have known enough of
Homer to be aware that there is nothing
about Cressida, or Troilus's love for
her, in the Iliad or the Odyssey. If he
had ever troubled himself about Dares,
he would have found that he was a
gentleman of great credibility. " Dares
Phrygius, qui banc historiara scripsit,
ait se militasse usque dum Troja capta
est; hos se vidisse quum inducise es-
sent, partim proelio interfuisse." Cap.xii.
Madame Dacier, who edited the book,
is quite in a passion with him, and
scolds with all the energy of a French¬
woman : " Et hoc " (the mention of a
Dares by Ptolemaeus Hephsestion, who
tells us that he (Dares) was
—the adviser of Hector not to
kill Patroclus, and also by .®lian)
" illud est quod homini nugaci et
inepto consilium fecit, ut sub illius
Daretis nomine, qui nusquam com-
parabat, libellum ilium quem hodie
habemus, in lucem mitteret, fingens
ilium à Cornelio Nepote Latine trans-
latum." His story was, however, a
great favourite in the middle ages,
when Homer was scarcely known to
the western world ; and it came to
Lydgate through the medium of Guido
Colonna. Now as Shakspeare, without
having the learning of doctissima Do¬
mina Dacieria, must have considered
the story ofTroy,as told by Lydgateafter
Colonna, and by Colonna after Dares
the Phrygian, who actually made the
Trojan campaigns under the command
of Hector, to whose staff he was attached,
to be notliing better than the work of a
homo nvgax et ineptas, it could not
(n) Tempest. Act i. sc. 2.
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
485
have occurred to him that it was at all
necessary he should correct Lydgate
by the sham Cornelius Nepos, even if
copies of Dares Phrygius had in his
time been as plenty as blackberries,
especially as he might easily have dis¬
covered that these six gates are wholly
apocryphal ; two only of the six, the
Dardan and the Sesean being men¬
tioned by Homer—of course, the or¬
thodox authority—and these two being
in fact but one. For the Tymbrian,
Ilian, Trojan, and Antenoridan, we are
indebted to the ocular testimony of the
innemon of Hector.
II. The famous .speech of Claudio,
in Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. 1 :
" Ay, but to die, and go we know not
where —
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted (o)
spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds.
And blown with restless violence round
about
The pendant world "
is generally considered as derived from
Virgil's description of the Platonic hell :
" Ergo exercentur pœnis, veterumque
malorum
Supplicia expeitdunt. Alim panduntur
inanes.
Suspense, ad ventos : aliis sub gurgite
vasto
Infectum eluitnr scelus, ant exuritur
igni,"—(^Mn. vi. 739-742)
and the similarity is no doubt so striking
as to justify that opinion. I must tran¬
scribe Farmer's remarks, in opposition :
" Most certainly the ideas of ' a spirit
bathing in fiery floods,' of residing ' in
thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,' or
of being ' imprisoned in the viewless
winds,' are not original in our author ;
but I am not sure that they came from
the Platonick hell of Virgil. The monks
also had their hot and their cold hell.
' The fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth,
and never gyveth lighte,' says an old
homily ; ' the seconde is passyng colde,
that yf a grete hylle of fyre were casten
therein, it sholde torn to yce." One of
their legends, well remembered in the
time of Shakspeare, gives us a dialogue
between a bishop and a soul tormented in
a piece of ice, which was brought to cure
a grete brenning heate in his foot : take
care you do not interpret this the gout,
— for I remember Mr. Menage quotes a
canon upon us :—
' Si quis dixerit episcopum fodagra la¬
borare, anathema sit.'
Another tells us of the soul of a monk
fastened to a rock, which the winds were
to blow about for a twelvemonth, and
purge of its enormities. Indeed, this
doctrine was before now introduced into
poetick fiction, as you may see in a poem
' where the lover declareth his pains to
exceed far the pains of hell,' among the
many miscellaneous ones subjoined to the
works of Surrey. Nay, a very learned
and inquisitive brother-antiquary, our
Greek professor, hath observed to me, on
the authority of Blefkenius, that this was
the ancient opinion of the inhabitants of
Iceland, who were certainly very little
read either in the poet oi the philosopher.
" After all, Sliakspeare's curiosity
might lead him to translations. Gawin
Douglas really changes the Platonick hell
into the ' punytion of saulis in purgatory;'
and it is observable, that when the ghost
informs Hamlet of his doom there —
' Till the foul crimes done in his days of
nature
Are burnt and purged away'—
the expression is very similar to the
bishop's. I will give you his version
as concisely as 1 can. ' It is a nedeful
thyng to suffer panis and torment ; sura
in the wyndis, sum under the watter, and
in the fire uthir sum ; — thus the mony
vices
' Contrakkit in the corpis be done away
And purgit.' "— 'iiite Booke of Eneados(ji),
fol. p. 191.
(o) The delighted spirit. This word puzzles the commentators. Warburton's ex¬
planation, viz. " the spirit accustomed here to ease and delights," is rather strained.
Johnson proposes benighted; Therlby, delinquent; Hanmer, dilated. Perhaps we
might read delated ; i.e. informed against.
(p) This, however, is not the version of the passage in Virgil to which it is sup¬
posed Shakspeare is indebted. I subjoin that part of Douglas :—
" ^m steritit bene in wisnand wyndis wake,
OT some the cryme committed clengit be
Vnder the watter, or the hidduous se ;
And in the fyre the gilt of other sum
Is purify it and clengit al and sum
Ilkane of vs his ganand purgatory
Mon suflfir."—P. 191.
I quote fron the same edition as Dr. Farmer. Edin. 1710.
486
Dr, Farmer's Essay on
[October,
Does any one imagine that Shak-
speare s;at himself lo grub in quest of
tliis monastic lore, or studied the Ice¬
landic labours of Blefkenius ? Those
critics are laughed at who imagine that
he l)ad read Suxo Grammuticus to learn
the particulars of the story of Hamlet ;
and yet they are more rational than the
Doctor, who laughs at them : for the
history, no matter through what chan¬
nels it reached Shakspeare, is to be
traced originally, and almost exclu¬
sively, to the Danish historian, while
notions and fancies of infernal tortures
are diffused throughout all ages and
countries. When Claudio, in this speech,
expresses his apprehension that it may be
his fate after death
" to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain
thoughts
Imagine howling,"
Dr. Johnson ffnely interprets the words
in Italics, to mean " conjecture sent out
to wander, without any certain direc¬
tion, and ranging through possibilities
of pain." In this melancholy wander¬
ing, the conjecture of the S.iga-singing
scald, or the legend-manufacturing
monk, could not in its material attri¬
butes différ widely from the fictions of
the poet, or the speculations of the
philosopher. All, equally men, had
but the same sources, physical or spi¬
ritual, to draw upon for images of sor¬
row and suffering. That Milton, when
he dooms his fallen angels to
" feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change
mure fierce.
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice,"
&c.—(P. L. b. ii. 598, &c.)
remembered this speech of Claudio, is
plain from the slightest comparison of
the passages ; but it cannot be doubted
that to one so deeply and variously
read in theology, in all its departments
(and in what branch of literature was
not Milton deeply and variously read?)
—the legendary hell of the monks, and
the infernal mythology of the Scandi¬
navian, as related by Blefkenius, and
all other accessible authorities of the
time, were perfectly familiar. We may
also be certain that he did not stop at the
monks ; but was well acquainted with
the more ancient ecclesiastical autho¬
rities—as St. Jerome (9). On the other
hand, to suppose that Shakspeare, with
Virgil before him, preferred consulting
the Legenda Aurea, or Mlefkenius de
Islandia, of which, in all probability,
he had never heard, is a supposition
of most preposterous pedantry. He
found his " Most sure the goddess,"
&c., in Stanyhurst's Mneid — bis pur¬
gatory, in Gawin Douglas's Aineid;
and Malone sends him to find his pic¬
ture of Mercury in Phaer's JEneid.
Might we not ask. Is it impossible
that mere curiosity might have led him
to look into Virgil's .lEneid.'
III. Ovid, also, he must have known
only in translation, for the following
reasons :—
" Prospero, in The Tempest, begins
the address to his attendant spirits—
" ' Ye elves of hills, of standing lakes, and
groves.' "
This speech, Dr. Warburton rightly
observes to be borrowed from JMedea
in Ovid : and " it proves," says Mr.
Holt, " beyond contradiction, that
Shakspeare was perfectly acquainted
with the sentiments of the ancients on
the subject of enchantments." The
original lines are these :
" Aurmque, et venti, mootesque, amnes-
que, lacusque.
Dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes
noctis ad es te."
[Quorum ope, cum volui, ripis mirantibus,
amnes
In fontes rediere sues ; conc«ssaque
sisto,
Stantia concutio cautu ireta ; nubila
pello :
Nubilaque induco : ventos abigoque
Tocoque,
Vipéreas rumpo Verbis et carmine
fauces :
Vivaque saxa, sua convulsaque robora
terra,
Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere
montes ;
Et mugiré solum, manesque exire te-
pulcris.
Te quoque. Luna, trabo, quanvis Teme-
sma labores
.£ra tuos minuant. Currus quoque car¬
mine nostro
Pallet avi, pallet nostris Aurora vené-
nis"] — Metam., vii. 197-209 .
(ij) St. Jerome on Job, xxiv. 19 (rendered in his Vulgate " ad nimium calorein
transeatab aquis nivium"), has " quasi duas Gehennas sanctus Job dicere mihi vide-
tur, ignis et frigoris, per quas diabolus haireticus, et homo impius commutetur.
Forte in ipsa Gehenna talis sehsuum cruciatus fiet illis, qui in ea torquebuntur, ut
nunc quasi ignem ardentem sentiant, nunc nimium algoris incendiura; et pœnalU
commutatio sit, nunc frigus sentientibus, nunc calorem."
1839.]
the Learning of Shnkspeare considered.
487
" It happens, however, that the
translation by Arthur Golding is by
no means literal, and Sliakspeare has
closely followed it :
" ' Ye ayres and windes, ye elves of bills,
of brookes and woods alone,
Of standing Gkes, and of the night,
approche ye everychone ;
[Through heipe of whom (the crooked
bankes much wondering at the thing)
I have compelled streames to run cleane
backward to their spring.
By charmes I make the calme seas rough,
and make the rough seas playne ;
And cover all the skie with cloudes, and
chase them thence agaiiie.
By charmes X raise and lay the windes,
and burst the viper's jaw ;
And from the bowels of the earth both
stones and trees do draw.
Whole woods and forests I remove — I
make the mountains shake ;
And even the earth itself to groane, and
fearfully to quake.
I call up dead men from their graves ;
and thee, O lightsome moone,
1 darken oft, though beaten brass abate
thy peril soon :
Our sorcerie dims the morning fair, and
darks the suit at noone,' &c.]
Fol. 81."
Dr. Farmer has not supplied those
parts of the quotations which I have
inclosed in brackets ; but I have put
them together, for further comparison.
Mr.Holt, whose very title-page(r) proves
him to have been a very silly person,
which character every succeeding page
of his Attempt amply sustains, could
scarcely have read the passages of
Shakspeare and Ovid together, when
he said that the former was proved to
be perfectly acquainted with the senti¬
ments of the ancients, so far as close
following of the Latin poet in this
speech of Prospero affords such proof.
It shews, however, that Shakspeare was
perfectly acquainted with the difference
between the enchantments of the an¬
cients, and those which were suitable
to the character of his Prospero. Gold-
ing, indeed, mistook his author, when
he translated
" Montesque, amnesque, lacusque.
Dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes
noctis adeste,'^
by " ye elves of hills, of brooks, and
woods alune, of standing lakes, and of
the night for the deities invoked by
Medea were any thing but what, in
our language, attaches to the idea of
elves; while the epithet nfone, though
perhaps defensible, is intruded without
sufhcient warrant into the translation,
and does not convey the exact thought
intended by Ovid's " Dique omnes ne¬
morum." But what was unsuitable
for Ovid, was perfectly suitable for
Shakspeare; and, accordingly, he had
no scruple of borrowing a few words
of romantic appeal to the liny deities
of fairy superstition. The lines im¬
mediately following, " Ye ayres, and
winds," &c., address the powers
which, with printless foot, dance upon
the sands ; which, by moonshine, form
the green, sour ringlets, not touched
by the ewe, which make midnight
mushrooms for pastime, which rejoice
to hear the solemn curfew ; and not
one of these things is connected with.
the notions of aerial habitants of
wood or stream in classical days.
When Shakspeare returns to Ovid, he is
very little indebted toGolding. We find,
indeed, in the Tempest, that Prospero
boasts of having " bedimmed the noon¬
tide sun," which resembles Gelding's
" Our sorcerie dims the morning fair,
and darks the sun at noone."
But the analogous passage in Ovid
would have been, in its literal slate, of
no use to Prospero,—
" Curres quoque carmine nostro
Pallet avi."
With this obligation, however, the
compliment due to Golding ceases.
Ope quorum. "Through help of whom.''
Golding. " By whose aid." Shakspeare.
Vivaque saxa, sua convulsaque roLora
terra, et silvas moveo. " And from the
bowels of the earth, both stones and
trees do draw." Golding. " Rifted
Jove's stout oak (robora) with his own
bolt ; and by the spurs plucked up (sua
convulsa terra), the pine and cedar."
Shakspeare. Manesque e.tire sepulcris.
" I call up dead men from their graves."
Golding. " Graves, at my command,
have waked their sleepers ; oped, and
let them forth." Shakspeare. Ovid
has contributed to the invocation of
Prospero, at least as much as Goldmg.
(r) An Attempt to rescue that aunciente English Poet and Playwright, Maister
Williaume Shakespeare, from the Erreurs faulsely charged upon him by certain
new-fangled Wits. London, 1749. 8vo.
488
Dr. Farmers Essay m
[October,
IV. Warburton imngined that the
word suggestion, in Queen Catherine's
character ofWolsey in Henry Fill.,
" is used with great propriety and seen)-
ing knowledge of tlie Latin tongue ;
and he proceeds to settle the sense of it
from the late Roman writers, and their
glossers." The passage is this :
'< He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes ; one that by sug¬
gestion
Ty'd all the kingdom. Simony was fair
play ;
His own opinion was his law. I'tbe
presence.
He would say untruths ; and he over
double.
Both in his words and meaning. He was
never.
But where he meant to ruin, pitiful :
His promises were, as he then was,
mighty ;
But his performance as he is now,
nothing.
Of his own body he was ill, and gave
The clergy ill example."
Warburton's interpretation of the
word from the Roman writers and
their glossers is " Suggestio est, cum
magisiratus quilibet principi salubre
consilium suggerit ;" which, however,
is not exactly Shakspeare's meaning.
He had it, as Farmer truly says, from
Holinshed :—
" This cardinal was of great stomach,
for he compted himself equal with princes,
and craftie suggestion got into his hands
innumerable treasure : he forced little on
simonie ; and was not pitifull, and stood
affectionate in his own opinion ; in open
presence he would lie and seie untruth,
and was double both in speech and
meaning ; he would promise much and
performe little : he was vicious of his
bodie, and gave the clergie evil example."
—Edit. 1587, p. 922.
Warburton was here, as frequently,
too learned, and looked further than
his author, who looked only to Ho¬
linshed. Nor is the word used either
in dramatist or historian precisely in
the Roman sense. Suggestion is purely
a legal phrase, to signify an information,
somewhat of the same nature as ex-
officio informations of the present day.
It appears to be as ancient as the com¬
mon law itself ; but it was so extended
by the statutes of the 3d and 7th
Hen. VII., as to supersede the legal
and orderly jurisdiction of the King's
Bench. The word is, indeed, origi¬
nally derived fmni the gloss quoted by
Warburton; but the utile consilium,
which was suggested to the prince, be¬
came in practice, under the Tudors, a
mere instrument to extort money. Tiie
more obnoxious statuteof Hen.VII.was
repealed in the first year of Hen. VIII.,
and Wolsey was more cautious than
his predecessors. Holinshed therefore
calls his suggestion "crafiie;" but all
through the play, as well as in con¬
temporary acts, will be found loud
complaints of the extortions by which
he amassed " innumerable treasure."
As I am not writing the history of
England, or the times of Henry VIII.,
I only refer to the ordinary authority;
adding that, of the legal meaning of the
word, suggestion, Dr. Farmer or the
commentators say nothing. Toilet talks
of there being such a thing as suggestion
to the king or pope, which would trench
on treason ; and Johnson, in his Dic¬
tionary, does not give the law ex¬
planation of the word. Whatever may
have been the seeming knowledge of
Sliakspeare in Latin, it is plain that
his seeming knowledge of English
was more copious than that of those
who lecture him. It was not at all
necessary that he should go to Roman
glossers, to find the fitting use of a
legal term of his own language. It
occurs in many of our old authors, as
in Chaucer—
" Oampned was he to die in that prison
For Roger, which that bishop was of
Pise,
Had on him made a false suggestion," &c.
In this speech of Katharine, the
word succeeding suggestion has occa¬
sioned some controversy. Sir Thomas
Hanmer proposed to read, " one that
by suggestion tythed all the kingdom ;"
and Dr. Farmer agrees with him, sup¬
porting the reading by a passage from
Hall, in which Wolsey is represented
as telling the lord-mayor and aldermen,
that though half their substance would
be too little for his demands, yet that,
upon an average, a tenth would be
sufficient. " Sirs, speake not to breake
the thynge that is concluded, for some
shall not paie the tenth part, and some
more." Warburton explains the word
ty'd as a term of gaming, and signify¬
ing equalled. The bishop might have
supported his interpretation by a pass¬
age in Hall, in which Wolsey is accused
of having, by various extortions under
form of law, " made his threasure
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
489
egall with the kynges but I doubt if
such was its meaning in the times of
Stiakspeare. Toilet, objecting to tythed,
on the ground that as Katharine had
already accused Wolsey of having ex¬
torted a sixth {i.e. almost double-tythed
the country), she would not now, in this
hostile summing up of his political ca¬
reer, diminish the charge,— interprets
ty'd as " limited, circumscribed, set
bounds to the liberties and properties
of all persons in the kingdom which
is rather strained. Shall I oder a guess?
Might it not have been—
" One that by suggestion
Flay'd all the kingdom."
If any body wishes to laugh at my
conjecture, he has my consent ; but I
could say something in its favour,
nevertheless. The Roman maxim, we
all know, is that a good shepherd
should shear, not flay his flock ; but
Wolsey being, in Queen Katharine's
opinion, the reverse of a bonus pastor,
preferred the latter operation. Valeat
quantum ! I certainly think there is
some corruption in the received text.
V. " It is scarcely worth mention¬
ing," says the Essay, " that two or
three Latin passages, which are met
with in our author, are immediately
transcribed from the story or the chro¬
nicle before him." It is not worth
mentioning at all, for how is a quota¬
tion to be given, except in the exact
words of the authority. In Henry V.,
Farmer remarks that the maxim oí
Gallic law, " In terrain Salicam mu¬
lleres ne succédant," cited by Arch¬
bishop Chicheley in his argument, is
found in Holinshed. This is a won¬
derful discovery ; to which may be
added that the whole speech, as we
have it in Shakspeare, is merely a
transposition of Holinshed's prose into
blank verse. Nothing more was medi¬
tated. Holinshed copied Hall, making
the blunder of substituting Louis the
tenth for Louis the ninth, which Shak¬
speare of course followed. Whence-
soever derived, the speech bears all the
impress of being reported — I speak
technically and professionally ; and if
it contains some historical errors, which
rouse the easily exr^ahle spleen of
Ritson, we may probably impute them
not to Shakspeare, or Holinshed, or
Hall, but to the Most Reverend orator
himself. On the principle repeatedly
laid down in the Essay, the dramatist
must be convicted of ignorance, be¬
cause he did not study the genealogies
of " King Pepin, which deposed Chil-
derich," and set every thing right about
'' the lady Lingare,
Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son
To Lewis the emperor, and Lewis the son
Of Charles the Great,"
and all the other persons pressed, with¬
out much ceremony, into bis service by
the Carthusian archbishop.
But if it be a cheap piece ofLatinity
to be able toquote this bit ofSalic law,
which certainly proves nothing more
than that Shakspeare had read Ho¬
linshed, and could understand five or
six Latin words. Dr. Farmer could not,
I think, so easily account fora passage
which occurs a little further on, in the
speech of the Duke of Exeter (s).
" While that the armed band doth fight
abroad.
The advised head defends itself at home ;
For government, though [r. through] high
and low and lower.
Put into parts, doth keep in one concent,
Congruing in a full and natural close.
Like music."
Theobald pointed out the similarity
between these lines and a passage in
the second book of Cicero's De Re¬
pública : " Sic ex summis, et mediis,
et inflmis interjectisordinibus ut sonis,
moderatam ratione civitatem consensu
dissimiliorum concinere ; et quœ har-
monia a rausicis dicitur in cantu, earn
esse in civitate concordiam." In
Knight's edition of Henry V., it is
justly remarked, that if Theobald had
taken the whole passage, as quoted by
St. Augustin, the parallelism would
seem closer; and it is impossible that
it can be accidental. In Shakspeare's
time, and for a couple of centuries later,
this fragment of Cicero was to be
found only in a treatise of St. Augustin,
supposed—^justly, I think—to have been
suggested by the De República. Where
did Shakspeare find it then ? We have
no translation to help us here. Knight's
commentator refers to Plato as the
originator of the thought,—observing,
that " Cicero's De República was, as
far as we know, an adaptation of Plato'd
republic ; the sentence we have quotes
is almost literally to be found in Plato ;
and, what is still more curious, the lines
of Shakspeare are more deeply imbued
with the Platonic philosophy than the
(s) Ought not this learning to he transferred from the duke to the Bishop of Ely ?
490
Dr. Farmer s Essay, ^c.
[October,
passage in Cicero a position which he
succeeds in proving. The most re¬
markable thing is, that Shakspeare has
really caught the main argument of the
treatise, and expounded it in a few lines
almost as a commentator. In the
Nvga Curialia of John of Salisbury,
who had evidently read this lost book,
the passage does not occur ; only half
of it is in what was found by Mai. But
in the Nugte Curialia we have the simile
of the bees, as patterns of good govern¬
ment, with a long extract from " Maro"
(Georg.lib. iv.v.l49, &c.), and also the
distinction between the manus armata,
— the armed hand which is to defend
kingdoms, and the prince, who, as the
caput of the state, is to hold council at
home. It is altogether a puzzling
piece of critical inquiry. No illiterate
man, at all events, found the passage.
VI. I have, I think, noticed every
point of Latin ignorance adduced by
Farmer, except one.
" In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew,
as an apology for his cruelty to Antonio,
rehearses many sympathies and antipathies,
for which no reason can be rendered:
' Some love not a gaping pig ;
And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th*
nose.
Cannot contain their urine for affection.'
This incident. Dr. Warhurton supposes
to be taken from a passage in Scaliger's
Exercitations against Cardan : ' Narrabo
tibi jocosam sympathiam Reguli Vasconis
equitis : is dum viveret audito phormingis
Eono, urinam illico facere rogehatur.'
' And,' proceeds the doctor, ' to make
this jocular story still more ridiculous,
Shakspeare, 1 suppose, translated phor-
mina by bagpipes.'
" Here we seem fairly caught ; for
Scaliger's work was never, as the term
goes, done into English. But luckily, in
an old translation from the French of
Peter le Loier, entitled, A Treatise of
Specters, or strange Sights, Visions, and
Aiparitions, appealing sensibly unto Men,
we have this identical story from Scaliger ;
and, what is still more, a marginal note
gives us, in all probability, the very fact
alluded to, as well as the word of Shak.
speare : ' Another gentleman of this qua¬
lity liued of late in Deuon, neere Exces-
ter, who could not endure the playing on
a bagpipe."
Scaliger was much more read in the
days of Elizabeth, than any ordinary
dipper into books in the present day
may be inclined to iiflagine. Why
did he not notice the following note
by Warburton on Love's Labours Lost,
act V. sc. 1, where Holofernes declares
the fashionable pronunciation of words
to be " abhominable ?"—
" This is abominable, &c.] He has
here well imitated the language of the
most-redouhtahle pedants of that time ;
on such sort of occasions, Joseph Scaliger
used to break out, ' Abominor, execror.
Asinitas mera est impietas,' &c. ; and he
calls his adversary, ' Ledum stercore
maceratum, demoniacum, recumentum,
inscitim sterquilinium, stercus diaboli,
scarahieum, larvam, pecus postremum,
bestiarum, infame propudium, aeiéa(fia."'
— Warburton.
I should be very reluctant, indeed,
to say that this quotation is literally
correct, unless I saw it in Scaliger,
among whose works it is scarcely
worth while to hunt it out, well know¬
ing the danger of quoting after the
bishop, when he does not give a refer¬
ence ; but if it be in Scaliger, as it
pears in Warburton, I can only say
that Dr. Farmer did not act fairly in
passing it by.
So much for the Latin part of Dr.
Farmer's performance. It has literally,
proved nothing towards his purpose.
A man, by teasing himself to death in
readingTranslations, Pantheons, Flores,
Sententim, Delectus, Polymetes, Ele¬
gant Extracts, and all that miserable
second-hand work, might do some¬
thing towards what is to be found in
Shakspeare. He might—perhaps —
but only perhaps. Is it not a thing as
easily to be believed that Shakspeare
could read—
" Alis panduntur inanes
Ad ventos,"
soft Pagan Latin of Virgil, as easily as
" Sum stentit bene in wisnand wyn-
dis wake," &c., the wondrously hard
Scoto-Saxon of Douglas ; or endeavour
to master the smooth verses of Mneid,
as the rugged hexameters of Stany-
hurst.
The knowledge or ignorance of
Shakspeare with respect to the modern
languages remains to be considered.
The consideration will be brief; and
with that, and some reflections on
dramatic composition in general, I
shall, with the permission of Mr.
Yorke, release my reader in the next
Number. W.
ERASER'S MAGAZINE
FOR
TOWN AND COUNTRY.
No. CXX. DECEMBER, 1839. Vol. XX.
DR. FARMER'S ESSAV ON THE LEARNING OF SIIAKSPEARF.
CONSIDERED.
BY WILLIAM MAGINN, ESQ. LL.D.
(Continued from p. 490.)
I FULFIL tlie promise of here releasing
iny readers from any further remarks on
Dr. Farmer, and shall not trouble them
with much more verbal controversy.
The concluding pages of the Doc¬
tor's Essay are devoted to Shakspeare's
knowledge of the modern languages.
And, first, of Italian :
" It is evident, we have been told, that
he was not unacquainted with the Ita¬
lian ; hut let us inquire into the evidence.
Certainly, some Italian words and phrases
appear in the works of Shakspeare ; yet,
if we had nothing else to observe, their
orthography might lead us to suspect
them not to he of the author's importation.
But we can go further, and prove this.
When Pistol ' cheers up himself with
ends of verse,' he is only a copy of Han-
iiihall Gonsaga, who ranted on yielding
himself a prisoner to an English captain
in the Low Countries, as you may read
in an old collection of tales, called Wits,
Fits, and Fancies ;
' Si fortuna me tormenta,
II speranza me contenta.'
And Sir Richard Hawkins, in his voyage
to the South Sea, 1593, throws out the
same jingling distich, onvthe loss of his
pinnace."
A magnificent judge Dr. Farmer ap¬
pears to be of Italian 1 I avail my¬
self here willingly of what is said by
Mr. Brown, in his S/iakspenres Auto¬
biography :—
VOL. XX. NO. CXX.
" Dr. Farmer thus speaks of the Ita¬
lian words introduced into his plays :
• Their orthography might lead us to
suspect them to he not of the writer's
importation.' Whose, then, with bad or¬
thography 1 I cannot understand this
suspicion ; hut perhaps it implies that
the words, being incorrectly printed,
were not originally correct. The art of
printing was formerly far from being so
exact as at present ; but even now, I beg
leave to say, I rarely meet with an Italian
quotation in an English hook that is cor.
rect ; yet I can perceive plainly enough,
from the context, the printer is alone to
blame. In the same way I see that the
following passage, in the Taming of the
Shrew, hears evident marks of having
been correct, before it was corrupted in
the printing of the first folios, and that it
oiiginally stood thus :—
' Petruchio. Con futto il core hen' fro-
vato,—may I say.
Hortensio. Alia nostra casa hen' ve-
nuto, molto onorato signer mio
Petruchio.'
These words shew an intimate acquaint¬
ance with the mode of salutation on the
meeting of two Italian gentlemen ; and
they are precisely such colloquial ex¬
pressions as a man might well pick up
in his travels through the country. Bly
own opinion is that Shakspeare, beyond
the power of reading it, which is easily
acquired, had not much knowledge of
Italian ; though I believe it infinitely
surpassed that ofSteevcns, or of Dr. Far¬
mer, or of Dr. Johnson j that is, I believe
X
648
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
that, while they pretended to pass an
unerring judgment on his Italian, they
themselves must have been astonishingly
ignorant of the language. Let me make
good my accusation against all three. It
is necessary to destroy their authority in
this instance.
"Steevens gives this note in the Taming
of the Shrew :—' Me pardonato. We should
read. Mi pardonate.' Indeed, we should
read no such thing as two silly errors in
two common words. Shakspeare may
have written Mi perdoni, or Perdonatemi ;
but why disturb the text further than by
changing the syllable par into per? It
then expresses, instead of pardon me,
me being pardoned, and is suitable both
to the sense and the metre :
' Me perdónate,—gentle master mine.'
" Dr. Farmer says, ' When Pistol
' cheers up himself with ends of verse,'
he is only a copy of Hanniball Gonsaga,
who ranted on yielding himself a pri¬
soner to an FiUglish captain in the Low
Countries, as you may read in an old
collection of tales, called Wits, Fits, and
Fancies :
' Si fortuna me tormenta.
Il speranza me contenta.'
This is given as Italian, not that of the
ignorant Pistol, nor of Shakspeare, but
of Hanniball Gonsaga ; but how comes
it that Dr. Farmer did not look into the
first few pages of a grammar, to teach
him that the lines must have been
these?—
• Se fortuna mi tormenta,
La speranza mi contenta,'
And how could he corrupt orthography
(a crying sin with him) in the name of
Annibale Gonzaga ?
" Upon this very passage Dr. Johnson
has a note, and, following the steps of
Sir Thomas Hanmer, puts his foot, with
uncommon profundity, in the mud. He
says : ' Sir Thomas Hanmer reads. Si for¬
tuna me tormenta, il sperare me contenta,'
which is undoubtedly the true reading ;
but perhaps it was intended that Pistol
should corrupt it.' Perhaps it was ; hut
' undoubtedly ' the Doctor, in his ' true
reading,' containing five blunders in
eight words, has carried corruption too
far."
If Shakspeare bad all the Italian
knowledge of the Delia Cruscans, he
could not have made Pistol quote this
saying in any other way. Pistol's ac¬
quaintance with any foreign language
was of course picked up from jest-books,
or from the conversation of those whose
sayings contribute to fill works of the
kind ; but it is pleasant to find Drs.
Farmer and Johnson bearing testimony
to the accuracy of broken Italian, and
making matters still worse than Pistol.
We must admit that, as Dr. Farmer
referred only to the Wits, Fits, and
Fancies, he was not bound to give the
name of Hanniball Gonsaga, or the
Italian distich, otherwise than as he
there found them. It might have been
expected, from so exact a critic, that
he should have expressed his opinion
that the Italian was not perfectly
correct ; and his having omitted to
do so may lead to the suspicion that
he knew as little about the matter
as Dr. Johnson himself, who lectures
Shakspeare with all the gravity, but
by no means the accuracy, of Holo-
fernes.
The second piece of Italian is almost
as amusing :—
" ' Master Page, sit ; good Master
Page, sit : proface, what you want in
meat, we'll have in drink,' says Justice
Shallow's factotum, Davy, in the Second
Part of Henry IV, Proface, Sir Thomas
Hanmer observes to be Italian, from
profaccia,— much good may it do you.
JMr. Johnson rather thinks it a mistake
for perforce. Sir Thomas Hanmer, how-
ever, is right : yet it is no argument for
his author's Italian knowledge."
Then follow three quotations from
Heywood, Dekker, and Waterpoet
Taylor, in which the word occurs.
Other English authorities are added
by the commentators. So far so good ;
but the learned mind of Steevens mis¬
gives him. " I am still," he says, " in
doubt whether there be such an Italian
word as profaccia. Baretti has it not,
and it is more probable that we re¬
ceived it from the French ; proface
being a colloquial abbreviation of the
phrase, Bon prou leur face ; i. e. Much
good may it do them. See Cotgrave,
in voce Prou." And Malone informs
us that " Sir Thomas Hanmer (as an
ingenious friend .observes to me) was
mistaken in supposing profaccia a re¬
gular (r6gM/ar.') Italian word ; the proper
expression being buon pro vi fuccia,
much good may it do you ! Profaccia
is, however, I am informed, a cant term
used by the common people in Italy,
though it is not inserted in the best
Italian dictionaries." The fact is that
proface, or prouface, or prounface, is a
Norman word, derived from the Latin
prqficiat, signifying, as Cotgrave says,
though he does not give its origin,
" Much good may it do yon," (f. e. my
1839.] the Learning of Shakspeare considered. 649
pledging) ; and has no connexion with
Italian at all (a). The most diverting
part of the business is the conjectural
sagacity of Johnson in reading perforce.
Had poor Theobald done any thing of
the kind, or " the Oxford Editor," how
sharp and biting would have been the
indignation of the variorum critics !
Dr. Farmer, knowing nothing of the mat¬
ter, never suspected that Sir Thomas
Hanmer had made a mistake as to
the Italianism of profaccia ; for his
next sentence is : " But the editors are
not contented without coining Italian."
Profaccia, therefore, to Farmer, was
not a coined word. The words which
are coined are rivo—monarcho—
buceare.
1. " Rivo," says the drunkard, " is
an expression of the madcap Prince of
Wales ; which Sir Thomas Hanmer
corrects to j-ibi, drink away, or again,
as it should rather be translated. Dr.
Warburton accedes to this ; and Mr.
Johnson hath admitted it into his text,
but with an observation that rivo might
possibly be the cant of the English
taverns." Sir Thomas Hanmer had
not read Marston, or many other of
our older wits, or he would have found
that rivo is what Johnson conjec¬
tured it to be. This is no great harm ;
but fancying that ribi is Italian for
"drink away," or "drink again," is no
remarkable proof of the Tuscan know¬
ledge of the critic who proposed the
reading, or of those who admitted it.
Rivo, however, is not Italian ; and it
has not been traced to any European
language, in any thing like the sense
intended in the English authors. I
suspect that it is only ribau.x—rakes,
ribalds. " Ho, my blades ! my bullies!"
Aux ribaux ! Eivo ! I do not press
the conjecture, but refer for some au¬
thority to a note(i).
2. VoT monarcho, in Love's Labour's
Lost, Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was
not aware that there was actually a
fantastic character well known by that
name in London in the days of Eliza¬
beth, proposed to read mammuccia.
An infelicitous conjecture at the best.
And,
3. For baccare, in the Taming of the
Shrew (a common English phrase of
the time, whatever its exact etymology
may be, and I own that I have not
seen as yet any thing very satisfactory),
Theobald, and Warburton, and Heath,
propose baccalare as the Italian for " a
graduated scholar, and thence ironically
for a pretender to scholarship."
Now, neither mammuccia nor bacca¬
lare are coined — they are good Italian
words, though not at all wanted in the
(a) Roquefort: Glossaire de la Langue Romane. " PaooFACE, proiin/áce; Souhait
qui veut dire, bien vous fasse ; proficiat." It is used so lately as by Paul Louis Courrier,
in bis translation of Lucian's .dss : " Bon prou te fasse," vol. iii. p. 47 ; but be was an
avowed imitator of the antique style. There is no authority for it in bis Greek original ;
and I am not sure that be uses it properly, for be employs it merely as an ironical wish
for good luck, without any reference to drinking. I suppose it is now obsolete in France.
(ft) Ribaidi, says Ducange, were " velites, enfans perdus, milites, qui prima
prcelia tentabant." Of course, they were the least valued troops — thence any good-
ibr-notbing fellows, " good enough to toss " in an army ; and as these people led pro¬
fligate and d issolute lives, " usurpata deinde Ribaldorum vox pro bominibus vilissimis,
abjectis, perditis, scortatoribus in French, ribaux. Ducange supplies several quota¬
tions, of which I take a couple :—
" Gulielmus Guiart MS.
Bruient soudouiers et ribaus.
Qui de tout perdre sont si baus,
—Roman de la Rose.
biais Ribaus ont les cuers si baus.
Portant sacs de charbon en Grève,
Que la peine riens ne leur grève."
In earlier times, it was not a word of reproach ; and the ribuuds in the days of
Philippe Augustus we|p " soldats d'élite auxquels ce prince avoit grande créance en
ses exploits militaires." But, as Pasquier remarks, " Peu-à-peu cette compagnie
de ribands, qui avoit tenu dedans la France lieu de primauté entre les guerriers
s'abatardit, tomba en l'opprobre de tout le monde, et en je ne sais quelle engeance
de putassiers." Tbey continued to bang about the court of France in the middle
ages, which, like all other courts of the time, was filled with a crowd of idle
followers ; and tbey were subjected to the government of an officer named roi de
ribaux, part of whose duty was to keep the palace in eating time free of disor¬
derly persons. It is ordered, in 1317, " Item, assavoir est que les huissiers de salle
650
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
places to wliioh they are introduced by
the conjectural critics. But why should
Shakspeare be pronounced ignorant of
Italian, because Sir Thomas Hanmer,
unaware of the existence of a real man
nicknamed Monarcho, which was ex¬
cusable enough, and VVarburton unread
in our Elizabethan literature, which in
a commentator on Sliakspeare is not
quite so excusable, made a couple of
uniiappy conjectures, proving nothing
more than they were not infallible in
verbal criticism. As for baccalare,
Nares, in his Glossary, remarks that
"the word {backare) was unpropitious
to critics, who would have changed it
to baccaUire, an Italian word of re¬
proach." Baccalare is not very pro¬
pitious to Nares himself, because it is
scarcely a word of reproach. The
Delia Cruscans, in giving its second
meaning, say, " Dicesi altresi d'uomo
de gran re|)utazione, ma per lo più per
ischerzo. Lat. Vir eiimius,pracellens,
singularis." Hardly words of reproach,
any more than bone vir in Terence,
though applied by the angry master to
the cheating slave. I doubt very much,
indeed, that baccalare is ever applied,
by itself, in jest {per ischerzo), but is
used sometimes jokingly, not reproach¬
fully, when it is accompanied by gran.
Gran baccalare is one who gives him¬
self great airs ; as we sometimes call
a noisy swaggerer a great hero, or a
great officer, without offering any af¬
front to the names of officer or hero.
The examples in the Delia Crusca
bear out this view of its meaning.
Ex.gr. Bocc. Nov. 15, 24 :—" Vide
uno, il quale per quello che com¬
prender pote, mostrava d'essere gran
bacalare, con una barba ñera, e folla
al volto." Galat. 28.—" Millitandosi,
e dicendo di avere le maraviglie, e di
essere gran bacalari," &c. &c.
If these be the only proofs of Shak-
speare's want of Italian knowledge,
never was case more meagre. They
amount exactly to this, that Shak¬
speare uses four words quite common
in his time, two of which his com¬
mentators, for whose ignorance it is
not reasonable that he should answer,
corrupt into Italian j and two more,
which, though these gentlemen think
differently, are not Italian at all, or
intended as such ; and that, elsewhere,
he makes a buffoon character quote a
couple of ungrammatical jingles from a
jest-book, which his critics by mending
make more corrupt. A noble style of
argument ! particularly in the case of
an author who elsewhere employs Ita¬
lian words and quotations with perfect
propriety and correctness.
Dr. Farmer supposes the Taming of
the Shrew not to be " originally the
si tost comme l'en aura crié, Aux queux, feront voider la salle de toutes gens fors ceus
qui doivent mengier, et les doivent livrer à l'huys de la salle aux varlets de porte
aux portiers ; et les portiers doivent tenir la cour nette, et les livrer au roy des
ribaux ; et le roy des ribaux doit garder, que il n'entre plus à la porte, et cil qui sera
trouvé defaillans sera pugny par le maistre de l'hostel, qui servira la journée." 1
conjecture, that when the proper officer cried " Aux queux !" [i. ». cooks !] the cry
might he met by the gang turned out to make room for these " qui doivent men¬
gier," with "Aux ribaux and thence made, by an easy lapse, ribaux, rivaux, riva,
as the peculiar rallying call of drunken people. It is so used by the prince, in the
very place referred to, when he shouts for Falstaff. " Bivo ! says the drunkard—call
in ribs, call in tallow."
It is sometimes joined with Castiliano, as in Marlowe's Jew of Malta ;
" Hey, Rivo Castiliano, man's a man."
And in the old comedy of Look about You,
" And Rivo will he cry, and Castile too."
" Castiliano " was, in all probability, a rallying cry in the Spanish armies. [Castilla
is three times cried at the coronation of kings of Spain,
" While trumpets rang, and heralds cried • Castile.' "
Scott's Don Roderick, st. xliii.]
And as the Spaniards had the reputation of being great swaggerers, they might be fitly
called on, as associates, by those who were shouting for the ribaux. Steevens quotes the
lines from Marlowe and the old play, in a note on Twelfth Night, act i. sc. 3, where
Sir Toby cries out, " What, wench! Castiliano vulgo — for here comes Sir Andrew
Aguecheek." For vulgo, Warhurton proposes volto; as if recommending Maria to
put on her grave, solemn looks, which is the last advice Toby would think of givin" ;
and she does just the contrary. Perhaps it should he " Castiliano luego." " Casti¬
llan, at once." Vulgo and Ivego might be easily confounded.
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
651
work of Shakspeare, but restored by
him to the stage, with the whole In¬
duction of the Tinker, and some other
occasional improvements," &c. The
reasons he gives for this opinion are
not over-sagacious ; and our increased
knowledge of dramatic history and
bibliography has left them no value
whatever. If the play be Shakspeare's
at all. Dr. Farmer is sure that it is one
of his earliest productions, in which he
is supported by Malone {Chronological
Order of Shakspeare's Plays, No. 6) ;
who admits, however, that he had for¬
merly been of a different opinion,
which I think he was very wrong in
altering. But as I have noticed the
play, not with any intention of de¬
scanting on its intrinsic merits (though
sadly urged thereto by Bishop Kurd's
most absurd and somewhat offensive
observations on the Induction, con¬
tained in his pedantic and ridiculous
commentary on the Epistle to Au¬
gustus), but of pointing out a very
different theory respecting the date and
origin of the play, I shall not enter
upon the question of its poetical or
dramatic value. It is contended that
it was one of the later plays, and writ¬
ten after a journey to Italy.
" I proceed," says INIr. Brown, " to
shew he was in Italy from the internal
evidence of his works ; and I begin with
his Taming of the Shrew, where the evi¬
dence is the strongest. This comedy
was entirely rewritten from an older one
by an unknown hand, with some, hut not
many, additions to the fable. It should
first be observed, that in the older co¬
medy, which we possess, the scene is
laid in and near Athens, and that Shak¬
speare removed it to Padua and its neigh¬
bourhood ; an unnecessary change, if he
knew no more of one country than of
the other. The dramatis persona next
attract our attention. Baptists is no
longer erroneously the name of a woman,
as in Hamlet, but of a man. All the
other names, except one, are pure Italian,
though most of them are adapted to the
English ear. Biondello, the name of a
boy, seems chosen with a knowledge of
the language,—as it signifies a little fair-
haired fellow. Even the shrew has the
Italian termination to her name, Katha¬
rina. The exception is Curtis, Petru-
chio's servant, seemingly the housekeeper
at bis villa ; which, as it is an insignifi¬
cant part, may have been the name of the
player ; but, more probably, it is a cor¬
ruption of Córtese.
" Act I, Scene I. A puhlic place. For
an open place, or a square in a city, this
is not a home-bred expression. It may
be accidental ; yet it is a literal transla¬
tion of una piazza publica, exactly what
was meant for the scene.
" The opening of the comedy, whicli
speaks of Lombardy and the university of
Padua, might have been written by a na¬
tive Italian.
• Tranio, since — for the great desire I
had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,—
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy.
• • • •
Here let us breathe, and happily institute
A course of learning, and ingenious
studies.'
" The very next"line I found myself
involuntarily repeating, at the sight of
the grave countenances within the walls
of Pisa:—
' Pisa, renowned for grave citizens'(c)i
They are altogether a grave people, in
their demeanour, their history, and their
literature, such as it is. I never met
with the anomaly of a merry Pisan.
Curiously enough, this line is repeated,
word for word, in the fourth act. Lu-
centio says, his father came ' of the Ben-
tivolii.' Ihis is an old Italian plural.
A mere Englishman would write ' of the
Bentivolios.' Besides, there was, and is,
a branch of the Bentivolii in Florence,
where Lucentio says he was brought up.
But these indications, just at the com¬
mencement of the play, are not of great
force. We now come to something more
important j a remarkable proof of his
having been aware of the law of the
country in respect to the hetrothment of
Katharina and Petruchio, of which there
is not a vestige in the older play. The
father gives her hand to him, both parties
consenting, before two witnesses, who
declare themselves such to the act. Such
a ceremony is as indissoluble as that of
marriage, unless both parties should
(c) It could hardly be expected that, while I write, a confirmatory commentary,
and from the strangest quarter, should turn up on these words ; but so it is. A
quarrel lately occurred in Voughal, arising from a dispute about precedency between
two ladies at a ball ; and one of the witnesses, a travelled gentleman, in his cross-
examination, gives the following opinion of Pisa :—" I did not see in the room
that night ; he is now in Pisa, which I don't think a pleasanter place than a court of
justice : I think it a d d sickening place. It is much too holy for me." This
was deposed to so lately as the 10th of October, 1839.—W. M.
652
Dr. Farmer s Essay on
[December,
consent to annul it. 'Ihe betrothnient
takes place in due form, exactly as in
many of Goldoni's comedies ;
' Bapthta. • • Give me your
hands ;
God send you joy, Petruchio ! 'tis a
match.
Gremio and Tranio. Amen ! say we ;
we will be witnesses.'
Instantly Petruchio addresses them as
' father and wife because, from that
moment, be possesses the legal power of
a husband over her, saving that of taking
her to his own house. Unless the be-
trothment is understood in this light, we
cannot account for the father's so tamely
yielding afterwards to Petiuchio's whim
of going in his ' mad attire' with her to
the church. Authority is no longer with
the father ; in vain he hopes and requests
the biidegroom will change his clothes;
Petruchio is peremptory in his lordly
will and pleasure, which he could not
possibly be, without the previous Italian
betrothment.
" Padua lies between Verona and
Venice, at a suitable distance from both,
for the conduct of the comedy. Pe.
truchio, after being securely betrothed,
sets off for A''enice, the very place for
finery, to buy ' rings and things, and
fine array' for the wedding ; and, when
married, he takes her to bis country
house in the direction of Verona, of
which city he is a native. All this is
complete, and in marked opposition to
the worse than mistakes in the Two Gen.
tlemen of Verona, which was written
when be knew nothing whatever of tlie
country.
" The rich old Gremio, when ques¬
tioned respecting the dower he can
assure to Bianca, boasts, as a primary
consideration, of his richly furnished
house : —
' First, as )-ou know, my house within
the city
Is richly furnished with plate and gold ;
Basins and ewers, to lave her dainty
hands ;
My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry :
In ivory coffers I have stuff'd ray crowns,
In cypress chests my arras, counterpoints.
Costly apparel, tents, and canopies ;
Fine linen, Turkey cushions 'boss'd with
pearl,
Valance of Veniqp gold in needlework ;
Pewter and brass, and all things that be-
long
To house, or housekeeping.'
" Lady Morgan, in her Italy, says
(and my own observation corroborates
her account), ■ there is not an article
here described, that I have not found in
some one or other of the palaces of
Florence, Venice, and Genoa — the mer¬
cantile republics of Italy — even to the
' Turkey cushions 'boss'd with pearl.'
She then adds, ' This is the knowledge
of genius, acquired by the rapid percep¬
tion and intuitive appreciation,' &c.,
never once suspecting that Shakspeare
had been an eye-witness of such furni¬
ture. For my part, unable to compre-
bend the intuitive knowledge of genius,
in opposition to her ladyship's opinion,
I beg leave to quote lír. Johnson: —
' Shakspeare, however favoured by na¬
ture, could impart only what he had
learned.' With this text as our guide,
it behoves us to poiut out how he could
obtain such an intimate knowledge of
facts, without having been, like Lady
Morgan, an eye-witness to them. -
" In addition to tliese instances, the
whole comedy bears an Italian character,
and seems written as if the author had
said to his friends, ' Now I will give
you a comedy, built on Italian manners,
neat as I myself have imported.' In¬
deed, did I not know its archetype, with
the scene in Athens, I might suspect it
to be an adaptation of some unknown
Italian play, retaining rather too many
local allusions for the English stage.
" Some may argue that it was possible
for him to learn all this from books of
travels now lost, or in conversation with
travellers ; but my faith recoils from so
bare a possibility, when the belief that
he saw what he described is, in every
point of view, witlmut difficulty, and
probable. Books and conversation may
do much for an author; but, should he
descend to particular descriptions, or
venture to speak of manners and customs
intimately, is it possible he should not
once fall into error with no better in.
struction 7 An objection has been made,
imputing an error, in Grumio's question,
are the ' rushes strewed?' But the cus¬
tom of strewing rushes in England, be¬
longed also to Italy ; this may be seen
in old authors, and their very word
giuiicare, now out of use, is a proof of it.
English Christian names, incidentally in¬
troduced, are but translations of the same
Italian names, as Catarina is called Kath¬
arina and Kate ; and, if they were not,
comedy may well be allowed to take a
liberty of that nature."
Tliis, certainly, is ingenious, as also
are the arguments drawn by Mr.
Brown from Othello and the Merchant
of Venice ; and I tinderstand that a
later lady-traveller in Italy than Lady
Morgan coincides in the same view of
the case ; and she is a lady who ought
to know " How to Observe." At all
events, there is nothing improbable
that Shakspeare, or any other person
1839.3
tiie Learning of Shakspeare considered.
653
of cultivated mind, or easy fortune—
and he was both — should have visited
the famed and fashionable land of
Italy. There was much more energy
and action among the literary men—
among men in general, indeed, of the
days of Elizabeth than of the last
century ; when making " the grand
tour,'' as they called it, was considered
an undertaking to be ventured on only
by a great lord or squire, who looked
upon it as a formal matter of his life.
The sparks, and wits, and critics,
and moralists, and dramatists, and so
forth, in the time of the first Georges,
either Cockneyised in London or con¬
fined themselves to the universities.
One set did not look beyond the
coffee-houses, taverns^ inns of court,
public-houses, and play-houses of the
metropolis ; the views of the others
were in general confined to the easier
shelves of the library, or the wit
and tobacco of the common room.
Going abroad required an effort be¬
yond ordinary calculation, or ordi¬
nary ambition. To get as far as
Paris was an event demanding much
thought and preparation beforehand,
and entitling him who performed it
to much wonderment ever after.
Italy was quite out of their line ;
and those who travelled to a region
so remote had marvels to tell for
ever. Professed, or rather professional
tours, were made there, resulting in
collections of letters crammed with ac¬
counts of bad dintrers, detestable roads,
diabolical inns, and black-whiskered
banditti ; or ponderous works com¬
monplacing about admirable antiques,
astonishing architecture, supereminent
paintings, divine scenery, and celestial
climates. The buoyant spirit of the
friends of Raleigh, Sidney, Essex,
was gone. No war, no taking of ser¬
vice, nothing calling on the notice of
" a man of action," led to the Con¬
tinent in the sodden days which fol¬
lowed the peace of Utrecht, and pre¬
ceded the outburst of the French
Revolution ; and the means and ap¬
pliances by which a trip to Constanti¬
nople is nowadays as little regarded,
and as lightly provide for, as a trip
to Calais in the days of our grandsires
were not in being. The nation was
asleep in the middle of the last century,
and its literature snored in the general
slumber. "IngreatEliza'sgoldentime"
it was not only awake, but vigorous in
the rude sttength of manly activity.
The spirit of sea-adventure was not
dead while Drake, and his brother
" shepherds of the ocean " lived ; and
an entiiusiastic mind of that period
would think far less, and make far
less talk about a voyage to the Spanish
Main, than Johnson did, near a couple
of centuries afterwards, of jolting to
the North of Scotland. The activity
of Shakspeare or his contemporaries
is not to be judged of by the sloth
of their successors " upon town,"
or " in the literary world." It is
to me evident that Shakspeare had
been at sea, from his vivid description
of maritime phenomena, and his know¬
ledge of the management of a vessel,
whetlier in calm or storm. The very
first note of Dr. Johnson brings him
and his author into a contrast not very
favourable to the commentator. On
the opening of the Tempest we are told :
" In this naval dialogue, perhaps tlie
first example of sailors' language upon
the stage, there are, as I have been
told by a skilful navigator, some inac¬
curacies and contradictory orders."
If to stumble on the tiireshold be
unlucky, tiiis is a most unlucky open¬
ing. In the first place, an acquaintance
with Shakspeare himself ought to have
made the Doctor know that in Feríeles,
Frince of Tyre, generally attributed
to him (I have no doubt that he wrote,
or rewrote, every linfe of it), produced
some fifteen or sixteen years before
the Tempest, there was a scene of sea
language ; and, in the next place,
Constantine, second Lord Mulgrave, an
experienced sailor (he was the Captain
Pbipps who sailed towards the North
Pole, and a (aptain in the navy at the
age of twenty-one — no jobbing, of
course), proves by a practical and
scientific analysis of the boatswain's
orders, not only that each was the very
best, that could be given in the im¬
pending danger, but that all were
issued in the exact order in which
they were required. This Constantine,
Lord Mulgrave, was uncle of the pre¬
sent Marquess of Normanby ; so that,
on the principle of family merit, even
the Tories ought to abate their wrath
somewhat against the ex-lord-lieuten-
ant, on the ground of his connexion
with one who, beside having been at
sea Nelson's earliest captain, may boast
of contributing to save the national
favourite of old England,
" Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze,"
654
Dr, Farmer's Essay on
[December,
fiom llie reputation of being no better
than a landlubber. Lord Miilgrave's
note, which is a very clever one, will
be found in Boswell's Sliakspeare,
vol. xv. pp. 184-6, at the end of the
Tempest. His lordship says, that per¬
haps Shakspeare might have picked up
his nautical knowledge from conversa¬
tion ; but, though his lordship tells
that to the marines, as a sailor he does
not believe it. It is, indeed, possible
that he might ; it is highly probable
that he obtained it from actual observa¬
tion. If we are disinclined (why we
should be so, I cannot tell) to grant
that he travelled in foreign countries,
is it too much to suppose that he
might have made a voyage to Cork,
on a visit to his friend Spenser, dwell¬
ing beneath
"Old Father Mole—Mole hight that
mountain gray,
That walls the north side of Armulla's
vale V
From Italian, thus triumphantly dis¬
posed of, we are called upon to con¬
sider Shakspeare's Spanish. This item
is short. Dr. Grey is willing to sup¬
pose that the plot of Romeo and Juliet
may be borrowed from a comedy of
Lopes de Vega; and, " In the Induc¬
tion To the Taming of the Shrew, the
Tinker attempts to talk Spanish ; and,
consequently, [thé Italics are Farmer's]
the author himself was acquainted with
it. Raucas pallabris ; let the world
slide: Sessal" As pocas palabras v/as
an ordinary cant expression of the time,
and used in several plays, those who
imagined that Shakspeare's knowledge
of Spanish was a necessary consequence
of his using those two words, must not
be considered as very sage personages.
I know not who they were, but I know
when it is assumed as a proof of ig¬
norance of Spanish that Shakspeare
quoted two words of it in jest, which
had been quoted elsewhere before, the
logic is strange ; nor when I learn that
Dr. Grey is mistaken in imagining that
Romeo and Juliet was derived from
' a COMEDY [so marked, I cannot tell
why] of Lopes de Vega,' [so spelt, I
well know why ; because Farmer's
reading having been only casually
Spanish, he did not know or think
there was any need of taking the trouble
to inquire what was the real name of
the dramatist,] am I inclined to believe
that, because Shakspeare did not find
an Italian story in a Spanish author, he
could not have read Spanish. lie knew
as much of it, at all events, as Iiis critics.
I copy the following from Archdeacon
Nares's Glossary, a work of consider¬
able pretence, and very disproportion¬
ate information. He is commentitig
on the phrstóe miching mulicho, in
Hamlet. ' It seems agreed that this
word is corrupted from the Spanish
malhccor, which signifies a poisoner.
By miching malicho, he means a
skulking poisoner; or it may mean
mischief, from malheco, evil action,
which seems to me more probable;
consequently, if mincing malicho be the
right reading, its signification may be
delicate mischief.' Now the words are,
not malheco, and malhecor, but malhecho
and malhechor, i.e., malefactum and
malefactor, from which they are de¬
rived, and meaning no more than ill-
deed and ill-doer, having nothing pe¬
culiar to connect them with poisoning
or poisoner. That the text is corrupt,
I am sure; and I think Dr. Farmer's
substitution of mimicking Malbecco, a
most unlucky attempt at emendation.
In the old copies it is munching mali¬
cho, in which we find the traces of
the true reading — mucho malhecho,
much mischief.
" • Jtlarry Mucha Malhecho — it means
mischief.' "
On this passage Malone observes :
" Where our poet met with the word
nmllecho, which in Minshieu's Spanish
Dictionary is defined malefuctum, I am
unable to explain which is to be de¬
plored. Might not Malone, without
any great stretch of critical sagacity,
have suspected that he met it while
reading Spanish?
Remains but French. Of this, too,
Shakspeare is ignorant, as of all
things else; and yet, " In the play of
Henry V. we have a wliole scene in it,
and in many other places it occurs
familiarly in the dialogue." This is
true, and one might think that it was
tolerably sufficient to establish the fact
that the writer of the dialogue knew
the language. Farmero aliter visum.
" We may observe in general, that the
early editions have not half the quan¬
tity, and every sentence, or rather every
word, most ridiculously blundered.
Those, for several reasons, could not be
possibly published by the author ; and
it is extremely probable that the French
ribaldry was at first inserted by a differ¬
ent hand, as the many additions most
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
6.55
certainly were after lie had left the
stage. Indeed, every friend to his
memory will not easily believe that he
was acquainted with the scene between
Catharine and the old gentlewoman, or
surely he would not have admitted
such obscenity and nonsense."
I am sorry for the introduction of
this scene, but on a different ground.
The obscenity, few as the lines are in
which it occurs, and trifling if com¬
pared with what we find in contem¬
porary French writers,— and not at all
polluting, as it turns merely on an inde¬
licate mispronunciation of a couple of
English words,— is in all probability
interpolated. It is precisely such gag
as actors would catch at ; and we must
recollect that Catharine and Alice
were originally personated, not by wo¬
men, but by boys. Yet, I am sorry
that it appears there, because it has al¬
ways tended to give those foreigners
who know French and do not know
English — a circumstance once almost
universal among critical readers out of
England, and, though the balance is
fast altering, still any thing but un¬
common, in many parts of Europe—
a false idea of the general contents of
Shakspeare's plays. The French critics
of thegoMÍ school, anxious to cry down
the English dramatist, made the most
of this scene ; and represented to the
ignorant all his plays as being of a
similar character. This is to be re¬
gretted ; but in this case, as in all others,
truth lives out at last. The scene is
no specimen at all of Shakspeare's
genius, and a poor one of his wit. It
is, however, a proof that he knew
French. But "it is to be hoped that
he did not understand it." Then it
must be supposed by the hoper that he
was a fool. Who can believe that he
inserted, without being acquainted with
what it meant, a scene in a play of
which, as I shall soon have an op¬
portunity of remarking more at large,
lie took uncommon care ? As for the
misprinting, there is not a line of any
foreign language which is not barbar¬
ously blundered in the quartos and
folios ; and, as Dr. Farmer well knew,
no argument could he founded upon
any such circumstance.
We have next, however, a very acute
remark, for which we are indebted to
the worthy Sir John Hawkins :—
" Mr. Hawkins, in the appendix to
Mr. Johnson's edition, hath an ingenious
observation to prove that Shakspeare,
supposing the French to be his, had very
little knowledge of the language. ' Est-
11 possible d'exchapper la force de ton
bratV says a Frenchman. ' Brass, curl'
replies Pistol. Almost every one knows
that the French word bras is pronounced
brau; and what resemblance does this,
bear to brass? Dr. Johnson makes a
doubt, whether the pronunciation of the
French language may not be changed
since Shakspeare's time ; if not, says he,
it may be suspected that some other man
wrote the French scenes. But this does
not appear to be the case, at least in this
termination, from the rules of the gram,
marians, or the practice of the poets. I
am certain of the former, from the French
Alphabelh of De la Mothe, and the Ortho-
epia Gallica of John Eliot; and of the
latter from the rhymes of Marot, Ronsard,
and Du Bartas, &c."
The logic of this is at least enter¬
taining, The scene is not Shakspeare's
because he could not write French, and
yet the mispronunciation of the word
bras proves that it was written by one
who had very little knowledge of the
language. W hich horn of this dilemma
are we to be caught upon ? Here is a
clever, idiomatic, burlesque scene in
French, and in (what is as difficult to
write consistently) an English patois of
French, damaged, as Hawkins, John¬
son, and Farmer think, by the mispro¬
nunciation of one word. Why, it does
not require much consideration to per¬
ceive, that, whoever wrote the scene,
even if the mispronunciation were of
the utmost importance, knew French
intimately well. Whether the word is
brass or braw, no external reason what¬
ever existing for our believing it not to
proceed from the pen of Shakspeare,
to Shakspeare it must be attributed.
There is a great quantity of French
in this play, so introduced—in the
speeches of the Dauphin and his com¬
panions, for example—as not to be
separable from the rest of the dia¬
logue ; and the very scene, blemished
in the ears of these exact critics, is,
with an admirable dramatic artifice,
introduced into the place where it
occurs, for a reason which will take
a little time to explain.
The battle of Agincourt was the last
of the great feudal battles. Fire-arms
were then speedily altering the whole
face of tactical warfare ; and that spe¬
cies of prowess which was so highly
esteemed in the middle ages gradually
became, long before Shakspeare's time,
of less moment in actual combat. The
656
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
knights sorely felt the change—perhaps
the greatest made by physical means in
the progress of society until the late
applications of steam ; and many a
gentleman participated in the indigna¬
tion expressed by the dainty courtier
against villanous saltpetre. With this
display of personal valour, the poetic
interest of battles in a great measure
departed. A modern battle has often
sublime, but seldom picturesque fea¬
tures. Chance too much predominates
over tlie fate of individuals to render
victory or defeat in any visible degree
dependent upon the greatest bravery,
or the meanest cowardice, of any single
person engaged, and the romantic or
chivalrous bard cannot deal with
masses. When Burke said that the
age of chivalry was gone, because ten
thousand swords did not leap out of
their scabbai"ds to fight in the cause of
Marie Antoinette, the orator might have
reflected—if orators ever reflect upon
any thing but the harmony of trope and
figure—that the days of chivalry had
departed long before,— from the mo¬
ment, in fact, that these ten thousand
swords had become but secondary in¬
struments in war. Milton is not the
only poet (Ariosto, Spenser, and others,
were beforehand with him) who assigns
the invention of gunpowder to the devil.
It would be rather out of place to
prove, that unless his Satanic majesty
has an interest in rendering battles
less sanguinary, he has no claim
to the honour ; but the knights were
interested in crying out against an in¬
vention which deprived them, safe in
the panoply of plate and mail, of the
power of winning fame at the cheap
rate of slaughtering imperfectly armed,
or altogether unarmed, peasants and
burghers ; and the poets had to com¬
plain of the loss of the picturesque fea¬
tures of the fight, in which at present
" nought distinct they see." Agincourt
bad no successor in the history of the
world ; for never again came such a
host of axe-and-spear-brandishing
princes, and dukes, and lords into
personal conflict ; nor could any other
field boast of such a royal fellowship
of death (d). It was also the last great
victory in Shakspeare's time that the
English had won over the French. The
war in France in Henry the Sixth's
reign was little more than a guerilla
tumult, in which the invaders, despite
of "Henry's conquest, Bedford's vigi¬
lance, your deeds of war," and all Üie
other topics invoked by Duke Hum¬
phrey, in declaring his grief; and of the
many acts of individual bravery and
energy of Talbot and others, were sure
to be at last defeated in campaigns
against a people gradually forgetting
their domestic animosities to unite
against foreign ravage. The wars of the
Iloses drew us from France to wield the
lamentable arms of civil contest ; and
when at last " the flowers were blended
in love and sisterly delight," tlie system
which called forth such invasions as
that of Henry V., and gave colour to
such claims as those adduced to render
" France his true inheritance," was gone.
Our present political arrangements,
which are essentially anti-cliivalric,
had commenced their operations. The
sixteenth century found us engaged in
religious dissensions ; and the eye,
anxious to look upon the brightest spot
of our military glory, had nowhere to
rest upon but Agincourt. That field is,
therefore, dear at once to the poet of
chivalry and of England, throughout
this play of Henry V. treated with pe¬
culiar honour and respect. Shakspeare
apologises for the scantiness of his
theatrical means to represent so glo¬
rious a battle :—
" And so our scene must to the battle fly,
Where (O for pity!) we shall much dis¬
grace,
With four or five most vile and ragged
foils.
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous.
The name of Agincourt."
This is one of the strongest touches
of national feeling in all the plays(e).
(d) The list fills more than three p^es of hlonstrelet, fol. 230, 231. Ed. 1595.
The very title of the chapter (cxlviii.) marks the sad feeling of the historian :
" Comment plusieurs princes, et autres notables seigneurs de diners pays, furent
morts à ceste piteuse besongne."
(e) Schlegel remarks, that in this play only has he introduced an Irishman and
Scotchman speaking their patois of English. As it also contains the Welshman,
Fluellen, representatives from the three kingdoms and the principality are present at
Agincourt. The industry of Malone, followed by Boswell, has rescued a few Irish
words from a corruption which sadly puzzled and embroiled former critics. The
qualtilie calmie custure tne of the old copy of Henry V. act iv. sc. 4, was conjectured
1839.]
llie Learning of Shakspeare considered.
In Julim Casar he had made no such
apology for the raggedness of the foils,
or the ridiculous brawl that represented
Philippi, which crushed for ever the
once resistless oligarchy of Home ;
or in Antony and Cleopatra, for the
like poverty in the representation of
Âctium, that gave the sovereignty of
the Roman world, of which France
was then no more than a conquered
province, and into which England was
soon about to be incorporated by the
sword, to Augustus. Far more famous
in Shakspeare's eyes was Agincourt ;
though, unlike those great Roman
battles, it left scarcely any conse¬
quences of lasting importance behind ;
and at the close of the century and
a half which elapsed between its be¬
ing fought and the birth of tlie dra¬
matist who approaches it with so much
reverence, it was, for all practical ptir-
poses, as much forgotten as the battles
of Richard Cœur de Lion in the Holy
Land. English feelings did not so
argue ; and their great expounder only
spoke in more eloquent and swelling
language the thoughts of all Iiis coun¬
trymen, when he made Henry predict
that the names of Harry the king and
his noble companions would be for
ever thw theme of gratulation.
" And Crispin Crispían shall ne'er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall he remembered "(f ).
Such, certainly, was the case in
Shakspeare's time ; and if tire lapse of
a couple of centuries has thrown its re¬
nown into the shade, it is because fíelds
of fame and spheres of action, which he
could not have anticipated, fill our re¬
collections, and so occupy our thoughts
(to say nothing of altered views of the
causes and objects of war), as to make
us think less of a feudal battle, which
has nothing but the undaunted courage
with which such tremendous odds were
met [and that certainly is deserving of
the admiration of all to whom bravery
is dear] to recommend it to our memo¬
ries ; on which, however, it is indelibly
stamped only by Shakspeare.
But with his feelings respecting Agin¬
court, what could he do with the battle ?
He was ashamed of representing in
actual jne/ée King Henry V., Bedford,
Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury
and Gloster, by the ragged foils and
beggarly appurtenances which he could
command. He therefore left them out
altogether ; and to fill up the battle he
supplies this scene, in which the buffoon
braggart Pistol is made to occupy the
audience, and to tickle their national
vanity by capturing and bullying a
French gentleman. The French trans¬
lator, Le Tourneur (whose version, take
it all in all, is highly creditable ; and
which, when not only the difficulty of
the task of translating such plays, but
the absolute odium their translator risk¬
ed in undertaking to praise and set off
an autlior denounced by the dominant
school olgoúl as something so offensive,
as to render it a shame and disgrace
even to quote his name in France,
ought to have saved him from the
dull buffoonery of Steevens), omits the
scene, as unworthy of Shakspeare, from
by Malone to be no more tlian a burden of a song, " When as I view your comely
grace,"—Calen o ciisture me, &c. And Boswell finds this to be in reality an old Irish
song, preserved in Piayford's Musical Companion, where it appears as Callino castora
me. It is not very hard for an Irish reader to disentangle from this. Colleen (or, more
Celtically, cailin) og, astore me,—" Pretty girl, my darling for ever." It was, perhaps,
all the Irish that Shakspeare had,— having learned it, as we may have supposed
Pistol would have done, from hearing it sung as a refrain. The words have no
application to what the poor Frenchman says ; but as he concludes by caf-ite. Pistol
retorts by a somewhat similar word, and as unintelligible, cal-eno. On account of
this general nationality of the play, I am inclined to think, in spite of Home U'ooke's
somewhat angry assertion, when claiming imp as Saxon, that " our language has ab-
solutely nothing from the Welsh" {Div. I'url. vol. ii. p.Si, 4to.), that when Henry V.
is twice called " ac impe of fame," the Welsh origin, justly or not assigned to the
word, might not have been unknown or forgotten. The Welsh blood of Henry is
continually insisted iq^on.
(/) Johnson has a very strange note on these lines. " It may be observed, that
we are apt to promise ourselves a more lasting memory than tlie change of human
things admits. This prediction is not verified ; the feast of Crispin passes by without
any mention of Agincourt." How curiously Dr. Johnson has proved, by writing
this very note, that he well knew that there was not the slightest chance of his
forgetting that Agincourt was fought upon St. Crispin's Day ! It is in all proba¬
bility the only battle of which he could, without reference to books, have given
the precise date. Blenheim, Ramilies, Malplaquet, Oudenarde, were fought about the
658
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
the text, and degrades it into a note.
I can well appreciate the feeling; but
if he reasoned not as a Frenchman,
but as a dramatic critic, he would
have seen that the only method Shak-
speare possessed of escaping the diffi¬
culty of caricaturing Agincourt against
his will, by turning it, in consequence
of his want of means, into a ridiculous
brawl, was to seize upon that part of
it which might be treated as avowed
drollery and burlesque. And this
scene, so justly and so skilfully intro¬
duced, Dr. Farmer wishes us to attri¬
bute to some other hand than that of
him, who so carefully considered,
planned, and arranged the play. And
why ? Because bras is pronounced
brass—not bran! Lofty criticism !
"The critic eye — that microscope of
wit,
Sees hairs, and pores, examines bit by
bit ;
How parts relate to parts, or they to
lohole,—
The body's harmony, the beaming soul.
Are things which Barman, Küster, Wasse,
shall see
When man's whole frame is obvious to a
flea."
The satire upon Burman, Küster,
and Wasse, in those lines from the
Dunciad, is unjust ; because these
learned men pretended to nothing
beyond that which they learnedly per¬
formed,—the grammatical or scholasti-
cal explication of the text and language
of their authors, over whom they never
presumed to take airs of superior in¬
formation. As they made no boast of
coming to the rescue of the old bards
on whom they commentated, or looked
beyond the limits they had assigned to
themselves ; the sneer on the extent of
their vision is unjust and inapplicable :
but this ñnding out that brass should
be brau, while the relation of parts to
parts, and they to the whole, in this scene
of Pistol, introduced as it is in Henry V.,
is a most satisfactory proof of the flea¬
like glance of Farmer. He hints (it is
hard to catch any thing like a positive
assertion in the Essay) that the French
scene had appeared before in some
othen play on the same subject,—
quoting from Nash's Pierce Fennilesse,
his Supplication to the Devil. " What
a glorious thing it is to have Henry the
Fifth represented on the stage leading
the French king prisoner, and forcing
both him and the Dolphin to swear
fealty." In the first place, " the French
scene," if it be intended by that phrase
to mean the scene written in French,
had never appeared on the stage be¬
fore ; and, secondly, Shakspeare, by
substituting Pistol's exploits for those
of the king, escaped the ridicule di¬
rected against the elder plays, or
mummeries, produced upon this po¬
pular subject, and made a jest of by
Nash.
As for the pronunciation of bras, we
are gravely told by Sir William Raw-
linson, that almost every body knows
that it is pronounced brau ; and so
Farmer's authorities and the commen¬
tators in general inform us. Pasquier
in his letters laughs at the Scotch, by
an escorche, or Escoce, turn madame
period of his own birth, and yet we may be tolerably certain that he could not upon
an instant have told the days on which they occurred,— perfectly sure that he could
not assign the saints to whom those days were dedicated. If the Doctor, in place of this
bit of cheap moralising, had reflected as a critic on the prediction which called forth
his comment, he would have seen that Shakspeare, in promising immortal remembrance
of the day on which Agincourt was fought, gave the immortality by tbe very words of
promise. The dates of other fields, thought the poet, may be forgotten ; but as long
as the English language lasts, I shall take care, by means of this speech, that by all who
know the English tongue, by all men,—wherever English literature can penetrate —
and that will be all over the world,—the names of those who commanded at Agincourt,
the day-on which that battle was fought, and the saints to whom it was dedicated, shall
be freshly remembered ; and he has kept his word. He has not " promised himself
a more lasting memory" than he contemplated. Homer has shewn us the same con¬
fidence of immortality. See II. IX. 431, where Achilles says that it was predicted, if
he warred against Troy, he should never return to his native land, but his glory would
be ever imperishable. " Notandum hie," says Clarke, " quam singulari quamque
modesto poeta artificio, gloriam dicat Achillis sua factam poemate sempiternam. Non,
eiegi dixit monumentum ; non jamque opus exegi ; nusquam sui merainit omninu;
nusquam suoriim openim ; nusquam patrice ; nusquam, ne partium quidem suaru7n ;
ut adeo Europœusne fuerit ipse, an Asialicus, plane non constat. Sed Achillis nomen
atque famam immortalitati tradidit." This note would be applicable in almost all parts
to Shakspeare. Clarke, it will be allowed, was a more perspicacious critic, and
better understood tbe meaning and intention of his author than Johnson.
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
659
i nto moudam (g). What would he have
thought of the rule which rhymes bras
with law, paw, jaw, daw, draw, kc.î
Davenant, quoted by Steevens in the
notes, has made it do so ; and Pope,
we know, has some of the same kind in
his " Town and Country Mouse
" lays down the laiv
Que ça est bon—ah ! goûtez ça " [saw].
So have many others ; but, to borrow
Johnson's words and argument on the
passage in Shakspeare which we are
now discussing, " if the pronunciation
of the French language be not changed
since [Pope's] time, which is not un¬
likely, it may be suspected that some
other man wrote the [above distich.]''
Bras rhymes now with the first sylla¬
ble of_/'a-ther. The question, how¬
ever, is. Was the final s of such words
sounded in Shakspeare's time? In
correct, or fashionable French, it un¬
questionably was not, unless before
a vowel ; but just at that time a re¬
volution was going forward among the
F'rench with respect to the sounding
of s. Pasquier tells us, that in his
youth (he died in 1615, aged 87), it
was pronounced in honneste, and a
little before in such words as escAo/e,&c.
as now it is espèce. Robert Stephens,
in his grammar, says that " utplurimum
omittitur" in words of the kind; and
Theodore Beza notes the variation of
its sound in different places, as Bowie
observes, in the Archaologia, vol. vi.
pp. 76-8. Pasquier, wiio has a long
letter on the subject, thinks it probable
that it was originally sounded in such
words as corps, temps, aspre,—derived
from corpus, tempus, asper. It really
is a question hardly worth debating.
That to our ears it was once sounded
is plain, ii'om the O yes retained by
our criers ; from our pronunciation of
Paris, Calais, which we once held as
masters, and other cities, Brusselles,
Marseilles ; of the names of Louis,
Charles, &c. In my own memory,
Bordeaux was generally pronounced
Biirducks : in a passage quoted further
on, from Laneham's letter from Killing-
worth, it seems in the days of Elizabeth
to have been called Biydeaus. And, at all
events, if it be of such moment, cannot
the most precise purist be satisfied by
reading,—" Est-il impossible d'eschap-
per la force de ton bras? — ah!" or
" bras, sieur." I must remark that
the French translator does not express
the same doubt of the propriety of the
pronunciation as the English critics.
Le Tourneur merely says : " Bras est
pris par Pistol pour le mot Anglois
brass, du cuivre." His ears, it appears,
are less sensitive than those of Hawkins
or Farmer.
Pasquier might have afforded a hint
to Malone, that when he said " the word
moy" (in this same scene of Henry V.)
" proves, in my apprehension deci¬
sively, that Shakspeare, or whoever
furnished him with his French (if, in¬
deed, he was assisted by any one), was
unacquainted with the true pronuncia¬
tion of the language," he was talking
without full knowledge of the subject.
He objects to moy being made a rhyme
to destroy. Now, we find in a letter
addressed by Pasquier to Ramus, on
the occasion of the letter's French
grammar, the following remarks :—
" Le courtisan aux mots douillets nous
couchera de ces paroles : Reyne, allèt,
tenèt, venèt, menèt Ni vous
ni moi (je m'asseure) ne prononcerons,
et moins encores escrions ces mots de
reyne, &c. ; ains demeurerons en nos
anciens qui sont forts, royne, allait,
venoit, tenait, menait."—P. 57, vol; ii.
Œuvres. Ed. Amst. 1723. Again, in
the same letter, of which he gives
as the analysis, " Sçavoir si l'or¬
thographe Françoise se doit accorder
avec le parler," after stating that oy
is a diphthong, " Qui est née avec
nous, ou qui par une possession immé¬
moriale s'y est tournée en nature," he
complains that Ramus has directed
moy, toy, soy, &c., as if they were
written moi, toe, soi, &c. " Car de ces
mots moy, toy, soy, nos anciens firent
moyen, toyen, soyen, moye, toye, soye.
Comme nous voyons dans le Roman
de la Rose, et autres vieux livres, que
nous avons depuis eschangez en Mien,
tien,"Sio. The fact is, that printing was
then beginning to reduce in every coun¬
try its national language to a common
standard of pronunciation. Holofernes,
in Love's Labour's Losf, complains of the
rackers of orthography, who speak dout,
fine, when they should say dou¿t, det for
de6t, cauffor calf (these are the men who
pronounce bras, braw), &c. Pasquier
(g) " Comme noua voyons I'Escossois voulant representar nostra langue par un
escorche, ou pour mieux dire par un Escoce François, pour Madame, dire Moudam."
jL.RéchercKes de Ut France, p.'7.55'. Ile did liot forget Pantagruel and the Limosin.
660
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
is equally indignant against those wlio
call royne, reyne, or ulloit, allit. The
courtisans aux mois douillets, of wliom
he elsewhere complains more at length
(p. 46), as having, in consequence of
being nursed in mollesse, transferred
" la pureté de nosfre langue en une
grammaire tout effeminée," might have
laid it down as a canon that bras and moi
should be pronounced as we now have
them. We may be sure there was some
patois in Shakspeare's time to justify
the pronunciation he adopted, and the
neglect of which might once have been
lamented by those who, like Pasquier,
remembered with regret the old mode
of talking ; as the Scotch judge, who,
in Lockhart's Mathew Wald, attributes
the decadence of Scotland to the cor¬
ruption of the tongue, which compelled
people to call a flay a flee{h). It is
quite consistent with usual practice, in
the midst of this learned exposition of
Shakspeare's ignorance, to tind John¬
son informing us that a moy is a piece
of money, whence moi d'or, or moi of
gold, "riie Doctor would find it hard
to discover the mint from which mays
were issued. Moidore is Portuguese ;
moedn [i. e. moneta] de ouro. It is,
indeed, far easier to discover ignorance
in the variorum notes than in the text
of Shakspeare(i). ,
I have but two more instances with
which to weary my readers ; and of
these shall take Farmer's last proof—
his " irrefragable argument"—first: —
" But, to come to a conclusion, 1 will
give an irrefragable argument tliat SLak-
speare did not understand two very com¬
mon words in the French and Latin lan¬
guages. According to the articles of
agreement between the conqueror Henry,
and the King of France, the latter was to
style the former (in the corrected French
of the former editions), * Nostre très
cher filz Henry, voy d'Angleterre and
in Latin, ' Prjcclarissimus filius,' &c.
' What,' says Dr. Warburton, ' is très
titer in French, fn'<eclarissimus in Latin ?
We should read pmcarissimus.' This
appears to be exceedingly true. But
how came the blunder 1 It is a typo¬
graphical one in Holinshed, which Shak-
sjreare copied ; but must indisputably
have corrected, had he been acquainted
with the languages. ' Our said father,
during his life, shall name, call, and
write us in French in this manner:
' Nostre très drier filz Henry, roy
d'Engleterre ; and in Latine, in this man¬
ner, Praeclarissimus filius noster.' Edit.
1587, p. 574."
This proves neither more nor less
than that Shakspeare followed Ho¬
linshed ; and that Warburton was not
over-reasonable in thinking that the
poet ought to have turned verbal critic
on the text of the historian ? We now
know that, in the treaty of Troyes, the
Fiench text faithfully represents the
Latin. We have had an infinity of
works on diplomacy since Shakspeare's
time, and one of the most furious (and
at the same time most comical) of his
censors, Rymer, has supplied us with
the Fœdera, among which the treaty
may be found ; but what means bad
Shakspeare, unless he turned parch¬
ment-hunter for the purpose, of know¬
ing but that Holinshed had authority
for marking a variance between the
French and Latin text '( Might not
King Henry have been described as
most illustrious in Latin, and most dear
in French ? Might it not have been
imagined that the conqueror, fresh from
the slaughter of Agincourt, would have,
in the unknown tongue, been described
by an epithet indicating his renown,
won at the expense of the blood and
(/i) " They might hae gaen on lang enough for me, if they had been content wi'
their auld improvements o' ca'ing a flae, a flee ; and a puinding, a pounding : but now,
tapsal-teerie's the word."—P. 257.
(i) On the subject of coins, I may remark that, in Timon of Athens, act iii.
sc. 1, Lucullus, wishing to bribe Timon's servant, Flaminius, says to him, " Here's
three solidares for thee." On which Steevens says, " I believe tliis coin is from the
mint of the poet." Nares thinks otherwise ; but being one of the most unlucky of
conjectural critics, has nothing better to propose than solídate, from solidata, which is
no coin at all, but a day's pay for a soldier. I have proposed, elsewhere, saludare,
Î. e. salut d'or, adopted into the English in the same form as moidore. Salutes, so
called because they were stamped with a figure of the angelic salutation, were coined
by Henry Y. immediately after the treaty of Troyes. See Ruding's Annals of the
Coinage, vol. ii. p. 308. Du Cange has the word, "Salus et Sai.ut. Nummus
aureus, in Francia ab Henrico V., Rege Anglim cusus," &c. In Rymer's Chart.,
an. 1430, we have " pro summa quinqueginta millium salutiorum auri," &c. In
Rabelais, liv. v. c. 54, " Neuf cens quatorze saluz d'or " are given as marriage-
portions to the girls who waited at table.
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
661
the glory of France, while in the lan¬
guage of those upon whom his stern
rule was forced, the epithet was
changed for one indicative of affection ?
Or what is, I suppose, the truth,
might not Shakspeare have copied
right before him, as he found his text,
without bestowing a further thought
upon the matter? As to his being
ignorant of the meaning of clurus and
cher, the notion is preposterous.
" Terre, terre, s'eseria Pantagruel, je
voy terre." I see land. One observ¬
ation more, and I have dene.
" It bath been observed, that the
giant of Rabelais is sometimes alluded
to by Shakspeare ; and in hh time no
translation was extant. But the story
was in every one's band.
" In a letter by one Lanebam, or
Langbam, for "the name is written dif-
ferently, concerning the entertainment at
Killingwoortb Castle, printed 1575, we
bave a list of the vulgar romances of the
age : ' King Artburz Book, Iluon of
Burdeaus, Friar Rous, Howleglass, and
Gargantua.' Meres mentions him equally
hurtful to young minds with the Four
Son$ of Aymon, and the Seven Champions.
And John Taylor bad him likewise in
bis catalogue of authors, prefixed to
Sir Gregory Nonsence."
The most ordinary readers, thanks
to Sir Walter Scott, now know some¬
thing more of one Laneham, or Lang-
ham, and " the entertainment at Kill-
ingwoorth Castle," than Dr. Farmer
did ; but let that pass. Let me pass
also another question, whether the
Gargantua of Langbam was exactly
that of Rabelais. From the company
in which he is introduced, I think it
probable that this Gargantua might
nave been one of the imitations of the
original romance, in which (see Brunet's
Supplement, under Rabelais) Arthur, and
Merlin, and the heroes of the Greek
fable, were inserted among the per¬
sonages whom the great Alcofribas
has immortalised. That Shakspeare
had read Rabelais, I have no doubt ;
and if he read him at all, it must have
been in French. Malone, who sup¬
poses such a supposition to be heresy,
positively asserts tbat there was a
translation of Rabelais in Shakspeare's
time. It would be a rare treasure to
a bibliographer if a copy were found.
Farmer, however, who, in the above
passage, asserts the contrary, is right—
ihere was none ; but he is wrong in
thinking that there is no other intima¬
tion of Shakspeare's acquaintance with
Rabelais than the mere mention of
Gargantua. The brawling boatswain,
in the fírst scene of the Tempest, is
evidently taken from Friar John. In
the same emergency, they shew the
same riotous courage, bustling energy,
and contempt for the apprehensions of
others. The commands of the boat¬
swain, " Down with the topmast ;
yare ; lower, lower ; bring her to try
with main-course," &c., found their
prototypes in many an order of John
and h\spillot :—"Au trinquet de gabie,
inse, inse. Aulx boulingues de contre-
meaine. Le cable au capestan. Vire,
vire, vire. Le raain à l'insail, inse,
inse. Plannte le heaulme. Tiens fort
à guarant. Pare les couets. Pare les
escoutes. Pare les bolines. Amure
bâbord. Le heaulme soubs le vent.
Casse escoute de tribord, fils de
putain. (Tu es bien aise, homme de
bien, dist Frère Jean au matelot, d'en¬
tendre nouvelles de ta mère.) Vien
du lo. Près du plain. Hault la barre.
(Haulte est, respondoient les matelots.)
Taille vie," &c. &c.
In Ozell's not over-accurate transla¬
tion; " Put the helm a-weather. Steady,
steady. Ilawl your aftermizen bow¬
lines. Hawl, hawl, bawl. Thus, thus,
and no nearer. Mind your steerage.
Mind your steerage. Bring your main-
tack aboard. Clear your sheets. Clear
your bowlines," &c.
The boatswain's complaint of the in¬
activity of his passengers, and his cry of
" A plague upon your howling," resem¬
ble John's indignation against Panurge :
" Panurge le pleurart, Panurge le criart,
tu ferois beaucoup mieulx nous aydant
ici, que la, pleurant comme une vasche,"
&c. The boatswain is "awide-chapped
rascal and John is " bien fendu de
gueule." (Liv.i.chap.xxvii.) Gonzalo
declares he has great comfort in the
boatswain, because there is no drown¬
ing mark upon him, his countenance
being perfect gallows i and is positive
that he will be hanged yet, " though
every drop of water swear against it,
and gape at wid'st to glut him."
John entertains the same opinion of
Panurge : " Par le digne froc que je
porte, dist Frère Jean à Panurge,
couillon mon amy, durant la tempeste,
tu as eu paour sans cause et sans rai¬
son ; car tes destinées fatales ne sont
à périr en eaiie. Tu seras hault en l'aer
certainement pendu, ou bruslé guail-
lard comme ung père." The descrip-
G62
Dr. Farmer's Essay on
[December,
tion of the tempest, given by Ariel,
resembles in many particulars that in
Rabelais :—
" I boarded the king's ship ; now on the
beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every
cabin,
I flamed amazement. Sometimes, I'd
divide.
And burn in many places ; on the top¬
mast.
The yards, and boltsprit, would I flame
distinctly.
Then meet and join : Jove's lightnings,
the precursors
O'the dreadful thunder-claps, more mo¬
mentary
And sight-outrunning were not. The fire,
and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty
Neptune
Seem'd to besiege, and make his bold
waves tremble.
Yea, his dread trident shake
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and played
Some tricks of desperation."
" Le ciel tonner du hault, fouldroyer,
esclairer, pluvoir, gresler, l'aer perdre
sa transparence, devenir opaque, tene-
breux, et obscurci, si que aultre lumière
ne nous apparoissoit que les fouidres,
esclaires, et infractions des flambantes
nuées : les categides, thielles, lelapes,
et presteres enflamber tout autour de
nous par les psoloentes, arges, elides,
et aultres ejaculations elherces — nos
aspects touts estre dissipez, et per¬
turbez, les horrifiques Typhons sur¬
prendre les monteuses vagues du cou¬
rant, &c. L. iv. ch. xlviii.
" Blow, till thou burst thee, wind,"
says the boatswain ; and
" The king's son, Ferdinand,
With hair upstarting (then like reeds,
not hair).
Was the first man that leaped j cried,
' HeTl is empty,
And all the devils are here'"
So Friar John : " Tonnez, diables, pe-
tez, rottez, fiantez Je croy que
touts les millions de diables tiennent
icy leur chapitre provincial, ou briguent
pour election de nouveau recteur."
And elsewhere ; " Vrayment voicy bien
esclairé, et bien tonné. Je croy que
touts les diables sont deschainez au-
jourd'huy, ou que Proserpine est en
travail d'enfant. Tous les diables
dancent aux sonnettes." When Gon¬
zalo is willing to "give a thousand fur¬
longs of sea for an acre of barren
ground, long heath, brown furze [r. with
SirThomasHanmer,ling,heath, broom,
furze], any thing. The wills above be
done 1 but I would fain die a dry death "
—we are reminded of Panurge, " Pleust
à Dieu je feusse en terre ferme
bien a mon aise," with his panegyric
on the happiness of cabbage-planters,
and Pantagruel's abhorrence of a death
by water. " Je ne veulx entrer en la
dispute de Socrates, et des Acadé¬
miques ; mort n'estre de soy maulvaise,
mort n'estre de soy à craindre. Je dis
cette espèce de mort par naufraige estre,
ou rien n'estre à craindre. Car, comme
est la sentence d'Homere chose griefve,
abhonesie, et dénaturée est périr en
mer." It is not probable that these
coincidences, and títere are many more
elsewhere, are accidental ; but I may
remark, that it is very certain that Sir
John Hawkins, whom we have seen
rebuking Shakspeare for ignorance of
French, had not read Rabelais, the
most famous French author of the
times in which Shakspeare was born.
In his remarkably trumpery life of
Dr. Johnson, p. 304, ed. 1787 [I do
not suppose there is any other], in or¬
der to shew off his learning. Sir John
introduces an extract from Sir Thomas
Urquhart's account of tlie Admirable
Crichton, given in Sir Thomas's usual
style. Among other marvels related of
the hero, we are told that, " immediately
after that he domineers in a bare un-
lined gowne, with a pair of whips in
the one hand, and Corderkis in the
other : and in suite thereof he homlre-
sponded it with a pair of pannierlike
breeches, a mountera-cap on his head,
and a knife in a wooden sheath, dagger-
ways, by his side;" i. e. like a German
of the day. Sir John Hawkins is much
puzzled to account for " hondrespond-
ed and affixes a note upon it : " For
this strange word, no meaning can be
found that is, can be found by Sir
John Hawkins. It so happens, how¬
ever, that the strange word is in Ra¬
belais, whom this Sir Thomas Urquhart
had translated. When the Gascon,
Gratianauld, native of St. Sever, chal¬
lenges the Germans, camping outside
Stockholm, to fight him (lib. iii. c. xv.),
they are called hondrespondres. "Ne
respondent personne, il passe au camp
des hondrespondres ». e. heavy fellows,
weighing a hundred pounds. " II a
voulu," says Du Chat, " par ce mot
de hondrespondres nous donner a en¬
tendre le centumpondiiim par lequel
1839.]
the Learning of Shakspeare considered.
663
les Latins désignant tout fardeau lourd
môme excédent le poids d'un quintal."
As Sir John Hawkins did not know
where to find any thing about a word
in Rabelais so prominently introduced
by Rabelais's translator, we may be ex¬
cused from thinking his appreciation
of Shakspeare's knowledge of the French
of the sixteenth century of no sur¬
passing value : as much, perhaps, as
Dr. Farmer's knowledge of the language
of him whom he calls " Hanssach the
shoemaker."
Let this suffice. The " celebrated
Essay of Dr. Farmer " is nothing more
than a pitiful collection of small learn¬
ing; useful, perhaps, occasionally, if
intended to illustrate the author on
whom he was writing—though, indeed,
not remarkably valuable in that parti¬
cular—but utterly contemptible in the
employment to which he has assigned it.
He has proved, what no one of com¬
mon sense ever doubted, that Shak¬
speare in his classical plays did not
look beyond the English translation of
Plutarch, or in his historical plays be¬
yond the popular annalist, Holinshed ;
and that, having made such a resolu¬
tion, he adhered to their text, without
further research. Lord Byron thought
proper, as a sort of tour de force, to
versify, in his Don Juan, passages
taken from prose works ; as, for in¬
stance, the accounts of many real ship¬
wrecks turned into the description of
that in the second canto; the siege of
Ismail in the seventh, taken from the
" Essai sur l'Histoire Ancienne et Mo¬
derne de la Nouvelle Russie, par le
Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau," &c.
Now we find it stated by Lord Byron,
in verse, canto vii. st. 8, that
" The fortress is call'd Ismail, and is
placed
Upon the Danube's left branch and left
bank
which is no more than a translation of
Castelnau's prose " Ismael est situé sul¬
la rive gauche du bras gauche du
Danube." Suppose Castelnau mis¬
taken, and that the situation of Ismail
was on the right bank, was Lord Byron
bound to take the taouble of correct¬
ing it, any more than of measuring the
distances and dimensions of the town,
to ascertain, when he wrote, St. 9,
" It stands some eighty versts from the
high sea.
And measures round of toises thousands
three,"
VOL. XX, KO. CXX.
that his French authority was correct to
a toise or a verst in stating that it was
" à peu près à quatre-vingts verstes de
la mer : elle a près de trois milles
toises de tour'f" It would be just
as rational as the complaint made
by Farmer, that Sliakspeare should
have copied North's translation of
Amyot's mistranslation, which repre¬
sents Caesar as having bestowed on the
Roman people his gardens " on this
side Tiber," instead of checking it by
ascertaining that Plutarch had written
rcu ^ora/ieu. With this discovery,
and some clumsy joking upon Upton,
and one or two others, who " had
found in Shakspeare more than Shak¬
speare knew," the merits of the Essay
cease. Nothing is proved of the want
of learning of Shakspeare. He quotes
no Greek; indeed, it would have been
very strange if he had. Some com¬
mentators ignorantly suppose French
or northern words to be Italian ; and
that is to serve as a proof that he who,
upon proper occasion, makes true
Italian quotations, knows nothing of
the language. A few words of Spanish
occur in his plays ; some of them had
been quoted elsewhere : ergo, Shak¬
speare knew no Spanish. French and
Latin abound in his plays ; but as there
is a supposed mispronunciation in the
one, and a chance exists that sedulous
hunting in the most out-of-ihe-way
places might procure some store of the
latter : therefore, we are to be certain
that he knew nothing of either tongue.
The consummation of impudence is
tiie following;—
" I hope, my good friend, you have by
this time acquitted our great poet of all
piratical depredations on the ancients, and
are ready to receive my conclusion. He re¬
membered, perhaps, enough of his school¬
boy learning to put the Hig, hag, hog,
into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans ; and
might pick up in the writers of the
time, or the course of his conversation,
a familiar phrase or two of French or
Italian ; but his studies were most de¬
monstratively confined to nature and his
own language."
Who would believe that, in the
works concerning which Dr. Farmer
comes to this monstrous conclusion,
very many whole sentences, and some
hundreds of Latin, French, and Italian
words, occur, always quoted and in¬
troduced with the most perfect pro¬
priety, and often with admirable felicity
and wit ? The very scene in which
Y y
664
Dr. Farmer's Essay on [December,
Farmer found this Hig, hag, hog, is a
proof that Shakspeare knew a great
deal more, and tiiat he could afford to
trifle with his knowledge. It is im¬
possible to conceive the character of
Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost,
or that of Dr. Caius in the Merry
Wives of Windsor, to have been written
by a man not perfectly versant in Latin
and Frencii. All through the plays
the style is filled with words derived
from foreign languages, happily natu¬
ralised and adapted to the genius of
our tongue. Minute allusions to what is
to be found in various foreign literatures
are abundant. There exists, in short,
as much reason to charge Dr. Johnson
with a want of knowledge of Latin or
Greek, as Shakspeare. It is a position
which I should not scruple undertaking
to prove from his Commentary, if I
were allowed to use the method of
Farmer.
But I shall not detain my readers
any longer. My object has been to
shew that, whether Shakspeare was
possessed of learning or not, there is
nothing in Dr. Farmer's celebrated
Essay—an essay of which its author
tells us " one of the first critics of the
age declared it had for ever decided the
question," to convict the poet of ignor¬
ance ; and, therefore, that all future
editors may disencumber themselves
of the Doctor's flippant labours. Any
thing valuable in the pamphlet, and that
is not much, has beeu duly gathered
into notes, and there it may remain.
The sophistry which turned into proofs
of Shakspeare's ignorance the anxiety
of Upton, and other scholars more
learned than judicious, to find classical
learning where nothing of the kind
was thought of, or apply classical
rules and technical denominations to
plain English, is not worth preserving.
Shakspeare must not be pronounced
illiterate because Upton was pedantic,
Warburton crotchety, or Colman, as
Farmer assures us, better employed
than in reading a translation ofAriosto.
That ordinary readers should think only
of the genius and eloquence, the wit
and pathos, the profound reasoning and
shrewd common-sense, conveyed in
poetry exquisite in all styles, from the
sublime to the grotesque, which are
profusely scattered through every page
of his works, and pay but secondary
attention to those marks of learning
which, in less gifted compositions,
would force themselves upon at¬
tention,—is not to be wondered at;
but there is no excuse for a commen¬
tator or " editor in form," as Farmer
calls himself, who cannot see in them
any literary knowledge beyond Hig,
hag, hog. It requires, in my opinion,
no small quantity of reading of every
kind to write a fit commentary on Shak¬
speare. Farmer unfairly says, " Those
who apply solely to the ancients for
this purpose may, with equal wisdom,
study the Talmud for an exposition of
Tristram Shandy." The libraries of
Cambridge would have supplied Dr.
Farmer with materials sufficient to
prove that much of the common-places
of general drollery and story-telling—
much of what fills the pages of the
Joe Millers of Europe, had its origin
in the Rabbinical writings, or the
older traditions whence they were
compiled ; and that many an ordinary
jest, and many a scrap of eccentric
learning, in Tristram Shandy, is trace¬
able to the Talmud, though Sterne
did not go there to find them. A
Hebrew reader, wishing to display his
own erudition, rather than to explain
his author, might cull from the rarely
opened Mischnas and Gemaras of Jeru¬
salem and Babylon (and do it without
much trouble or learning either, by
merely turning over Bartoloccius) (/c),
materials to afford strange illustra¬
tions of any volume of Rabelaisian
drollery; and, according as his task
was executed, produce a work of
pedantry or learning, of interest or of
folly ; but what analogy is there be¬
tween the cases of Shakspeare and
Sterne in the comparison here insti¬
tuted? The chances that Sterne had
ever read any Hebrew are rather small,
still smaller that he was acquainted
with even the Rabbiuical letters in
which the Talmud is written. No
odds ever laid would be too great to
set against his having, for a moment,
consulted one of its pages. Can we
say the same of Shakspeare and the
classics ? He may not, perhaps, have
read Homer in the original Greek,
though I see nothing in his plays to
prove the contrary, and should receive
(k) Particularly in his third volume, where the Talmud is described at great
prolixitv. Some jokes, which passed on the middle ages as occidental, will be found
at pp, 603-4.—£ii>/ief/iera Magna Rabbinica,
1839.] the Learning of Shakspeare considered. 665
any external evidence shewing that
.he was acquainted with the language
without surprise. Sure I am that no¬
where has Shakspeare afforded us
such an evidence of a want of critical
reading of Homer, coupled with such
a general ignorance of the ordinary
rules of Greek giammar and metre, as
Dr. Johnson in his note on the line
" A caitiff recreant to my cousin Here¬
ford," in Richard II., act i. sc. 2.
" Caitiff originally signiñed a prisoner
[which it never did] ; next a slave,
from the condition of prisoners ; then
a scoundrel, from the qualities of a
slave :—
H/iirv ms ¿(¡r>i{ uvtaitvrai itvXm
On this Holt White remarks, that the
learned commentator, quoting from
memory, " has compressed a couplet
into a single line and most learnedly
has he managed it. In the first place,
it is a pleasant mark of scholarship to
misquote one of the best-known and
most frequntly cited passages of the
Odyssey — (if Shakspeare had done
so! ); and, secondly, Eumaeus,
the divine swineherd, who speaks the
lines, has to thank Johnson for a
superfluous article (tjij ¿¡st>is), a false
quantity (à^aaivurai before?), and an
un-Homeric sentiment, by attributing
to the " servile day " that which Homer
attributes to the far-seeing Jove. We
cannot say of the doctor as Mercury
says of Charon—Ei/ye «a^ahis. In com¬
menting on a writer so multifarious, and
drawing his allusions from such various
sources as Shakspeare, it would indeed
be absurd to confine ourselves solely
to consulting classical writers for the
purposes of illustration ; but it would
be equally absurd to neglect them alto¬
gether out of respect to a theory of
his literary ignorance, conceived in
impertinence, and supported by such
weak reasons and paltry instances as
those urged and adduced by Farmer.
It seems to me just as reasonable to
believe that Sterne had studied Rabbi
Hakkadosh, as to maintain that Shak¬
speare had not read Virgil and Ovid,
and was not master of the languages
of France and Italy.
What I principally complain of, and
what in fact induced me to write these
papers, is the tone of cool insult display¬
ed towards one of the greatest men tliat
ever appeared in the world, by every
puny pedant who had gone through the
ceremonial of Uig, hag, hog. One tells
us that Shakspeare had no acquaint¬
ance with the history of literature.
Here we are assured by a man who is
not able to explain ordinary words of
Italian or French, that Shakspeare
could not have read these languages,
and was obliged to look to translatioas
for a scanty knowledge of Rabelais,
Ronsard, or Montaigne. Want of
knowledge of Latin is thrust upon him
by persons superficially acquainted with
its language or its literature, and who
would assuredly blunder in any at¬
tempt to write it. Ritson accuses him
of ignorance, because he has mixed
names of different languages in Ham¬
let, the said Ritson not being able to
distinguish Arthur of the Round Table
from the constellation Arcturus ; (/)
men who know not the technical words
(I) Hamlet, act i. sc. 1. " The strange indiscriminate use of Italian and Roman
names in this and other plays, makes it obvious that the author was little conversant in
even the rudiments of either language."—Ritson, Sagacious reason, and worthy of the
critic I We find in a letter of his to Robert Surtees, published by Sir Harris Nicho¬
las, a request to have a translation made for him of a singular epigram by Bishop
Aldhelm. Other learned persons had assisted him in this diflicult work of recondite
scholarship, but he was not satisfied ; for " with these, such as they are, and the
help of Ainsworth's Dictionarp, I have endeavoured to make a sort of translation, line
for line, as well as I could." He tiren prattles about Arthure's, or King Arthur's
Wain ;—" Though I have never met with Arthur's wain in any hook or map." Lyd-
gate, Douglas, and Owen, are then referred to for Arthure's plough, Arthure's hufe,
and Arthure's harp ; and then come the " obscure and obsolete words" of Aldhelm.
I give the first two lines, and Ritson's translation: —
" De Arturo.
Sydereis stipor turmis in vertice mundi
Esseda, famoso gesto cognomine vulgi."
" Of Arthur.
With starry troops I am environed in the pole of the world.
In a war-chariot, a famous surname of the people being born I"
" A famous surname of the people being born I" What can this mean 1 The bishop's
verses relate to the star Arcturus; a line drawn from which, N. by N.W., falls in
666
Dr. Fanner's Essay, |c. [December,
of our courts are content to give him
credit for a mere scrivener's knowledge
of law ; Cockneys, who could not tell
the stem from the stern of a ship, find
him guilty of not knowing seamen's
language; Steevens is inclined to think
that he had no means of ascertaining
the names of the flowers of the field ;
critics of Hampstead or Fleet Street,
" who never rowed in gondola," arequite
certain that Italy was terra incognita
to him ; Johnson assures us that when¬
ever he meddles with geography, he
goes astray, the doctor having, when
he wrote the note, merely gone astray
himself : in short, it would be
easy to prove, from the assertions of
Shakspeare's commentators, that there
was nothing in the world — language,
history, geography, law, theology, an¬
tiquity, art, science, down to domestic
botany, in which his ignorance was not
profound; but not more easy than to
select from their own labours a most
complete body of ignorance with re¬
spect to all the subjects on which they
are most sarcastic and pungent, pro¬
found and dogmatic, at his expense.
It is not worth the labour to make
the collection; I have only to con¬
clude by willingly admitting that the
readers ofShakspeare have good reason
to be obliged to the commentators in
general for what they have done—that
they have considerably improved the
text, explained many a difficult pass¬
age, interpreted many an obscure word.
and, by diligent reading and research,
thrown much light over the plays.
For this they deserve their due portion
of praise ; those among them, especial¬
ly, who thought less of themselves than
of Shakspeare. They by no means
merit the sweeping censures of Tooke,
Mathias (w), and others. I know,
also, that commentators on works so
voluminous, full of so many trouble¬
some difficulties of all kinds, and re¬
quiring such an extended and diver¬
sified course of reading, must make
mistakes, and therefore that their errors
or rash guesses should be leniently
judged ; but no great leniency can
be extended to those who, selecting the
easiest part of the task for themselves
— that of dipping into the most ob¬
vious classical writers—should, on the
strength of very small learning, set
themselves up as entitled to sneer at
a supposed want of knowledge in Shak¬
speare, while their own criticisms and
comments afford countless indications,
" vocal to the intelligent," that they
have themselves no great erudition to
boast of.
Apologising to your readers for so
long detaining them, through your in¬
dulgence, from pleasanter matter,
I have the honour to be,
dear Mr. Yorki,
faithfully yours,
Wjlliam Maginn.
Oct, 25 [St. Crispin's Dap],
with the last star of the Great Bear, or the Charles's Wain. Arctunis is, therefore,
made to say, that he bears the wain known by the famous cognomen vulgi—i.e. of the
ploughman—the Churl's Wain, which in aftertimes was corrupted into the Charles's
Wain. Ritson was deceived by the spelling usual in old manuscripts of Arturus for
Arcturus (" Artus, non Arctus ; scriptum video in antiquissimis lihris prsecipueque in
Virgilio Carpensi," says Aldus Manutius, in his Orthographiée Ratio, p.77); and he
accordingly pressed Bishop Aldhelm's epigram (as he calls it, the bishop styles his
compositions aenigmata) into the service of the Round Table. I do not know where
he found it, hut if it was in Aldhelm's Poética NonnuUa, edited by Delrio (Moguntiae,
1601, p. 63,) the preceding mnigma on the vertigo poli, which concludes with an
allusion to the rapidity of the motion of the Septem sidera, might have given him a hint.
Whether Arcturus had any thing to do with Arthur, is a very different question
indeed ; hut there is no question as to the utter ignorance of Latin manifested, and
confessed, by this critic of Shakspeare's Latinity. I am sorry to see this letter quoted,
with some admiration, in Fraser's Magazine, vol. ix. p. 614.
(m) In the Diversions of Purley, Tooke says, " The ignorance and presumption of
his commentators have shamefully disfigured Shakspeare's text, 'ihe first folio,
notwithstanding some few palpable misprints, requires none of their alterations.
Had they understood English as well as he did, they would not have quarrelled with
his language." And again: " Rack is a very common word, most happily used, and
ought not to he displaced because the commentators knew not its meaning. If such
a rule were adopted, the commentators themselves would, most of them, become
speechless."—Vol. ii. pp. 389-91, 4to. Yet he departs from the folio to read " one
dowle that's in my plume," for the folio plumbe in the Tempest, p, 259 ; and, in Antony
and Cleopatra, his commentary alters the rack dis limes into dis limbs, p. 392. Mathias's
attack on the commentators in his Pursuits of Literature, was once very popular. It
is alluded to even by Schlegel.
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