converfation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian: but his fludies were moft demonftratively confined to nature and his own language.

In the course of this difquifition, you have often fmiled at all fuch reading, as was never read;" and poffibly I may have indulged it too far: but it is the reading neceffary for a comment on Shakfpeare. Those who apply folely to the ancients for this purpose, may with equal wisdom study the TALMUD for an expofition of TRISTRAM SHANDY. Nothing but an intimate acquaintance with the writers of the time, who are frequently of no other value, can point out his allufions, and afcertain his phrafeology. The reformers of his text are for ever equally positive, and equally wrong.

The

cant of the age, a provincial expreffion, an obfcure proverb, an obsolete custom, a hint at a person or a fact no longer remembered, hath continually defeated the best of our gueffers: You must not fuppofe me to fpeak at random, when I affure you, that from fome forgotten book or other, I can demonftrate this to you in many hundred places; and I almoft wifh, that I had not been perfuaded into a different employment.

Though I have as much of the natale folum3 about

and beere? Truly (quoth I) they be al good, euery one taken by himfelfe alone, but if you put Malmefye, and facke, redde wyne and white, ale and beere, and al in one pot, you fhall make a drinke neither eafye to be knowen, nor yet holfome for the bodye.

8 This alludes to an intended publication of the Antiquities of the Town of Leicefter. The work was juft begun at the prefs, when the writer was called to the principal tuition of a large college, and was obliged to decline the undertaking. The

me, as any man whatsoever; yet, I own, the primrofe path is ftill more pleating than the Foffe or the Watling-Street:

And when I am fairly rid of the duft of topogra phical antiquity, which hath continued much longer about me than I expected; you may very probably be troubled again with the ever fruitful fubject of SHAKSPEARE and his COMMENTATORS.

plates, however, and fome of the materials have been long ago put into the hands of a gentleman, who is every way qualified to make a proper afe of them.

APPENDIX

то

MR. COLMAN'S TRANSLATION OF

TERENCE,

(OCTAVO EDITION.)

THE reverend and ingenious Mr. Farmer, in his

curious and entertaining Effuy on the Learning of Shakspeare, having done me the honour to animadvert on fome paffages in the preface to this tranflation, I cannot difmifs this edition without declaring how far I coincide with that gentleman; although what I then threw out carelessly on the fubject of this pamphlet was merely incidental, nor did I mean to enter the lifts as a champion to defend either fide of the question.

It is most true, as Mr. Farmer takes for granted, that I had never met with the old comedy called The Suppofes, nor has it ever yet fallen into my hands; yet I am willing to grant, on Mr. Farmer's authority, that Shakspeare borrowed part of the plot of The Taming of the Shrew, from that old tranflation of Ariofto's play by George Gafcoign, and had no obligations to Plautus. I will accede also to the truth of Dr. Johnson's and Mr. Farmer's obfervation, that the line from Terence, exactly as it ftands in Shakspeare, is extant in Lilly and Udall's Floures for Latin Speaking. Still, however, Shak – fpeare's total ignorance of the learned languages

remains to be proved; for it must be granted, that fuch books are put into the hands of those who are learning thofe languages, in which clafs we must neceffarily rank Shakspeare, or he could not even have quoted Terence from Udall or Lilly; nor is it likely, that fo rapid a genius fhould not have made fome further progrefs. "Our author," fays Dr. Johnson, as quoted by Mr. Farmer, "had this line from Lilly; which I mention, that it may not be brought as an argument of his learning." is, however, an argument that he read Lilly; and a few pages further it feems pretty certain, that the author of The Taming of the Shrew had at least read Ovid; from whofe Epiftle we find these lines:

"Hac ibat Simois; hic eft Sigeïa tellus;

"Hic fteterat Priami regia celfa fenis.

It

And what does Dr. Johnfon fay on this occafion? Nothing. And what does Mr. Farmer fay on this occafion? Nothing.

In Love's Labour's Loft, which, bad as it is, is afcribed by Dr. Johnfon himself to Shakspeare, there occurs the word thrafonical; another argument which feems to fhew that he was not unacquainted with the comedies of Terence; not to mention, that the character of the schoolmafter in the fame play could not poffibly be written by a man who had travelled no further in Latin than hic, hac, hoc. In Henry the Sixth we meet with a quotation from Virgil:

"Tantæne animis cœleftibus ire?"

But this, it feems, proves nothing, any more than the lines from Terence and Ovid, in the Taming

of the Shrew; for Mr. Farmer looks on Shakspeare's property in the comedy to be extremely difputable; and he has no doubt but Henry the Sixth had the fame author with Edward the Third, which had been recovered to the world in Mr. Capell's Prolufions.

If any play in the collection bears internal evidence of Shakspeare's hand, we may fairly give him Timon of Athens. In this play we have a familiar quotation from Horace :

"Ira furor brevis eft."

I will not maintain but this hemistich may be found in Lilly or Udall; or that it is not in the Palace of Pleafure, or the English Plutarch; or that it was not originally foifted in by the players; it ftands, however, in the play of Timon of Athens.

The world in general, and those who purpose to comment on Shakspeare in particular, will owe much to Mr. Farmer, whose researches into our old authors throw a luftre on many paffages, the obfcurity of which muft elfe have been impenetrable. No future Upton or Gildon will go further than North's tranflation for Shakspeare's acquaintance with Plutarch, or balance between Dares Phrygius, and The Troye Booke of Lydgate. The Hyftorie of Hamblet, in black letter, will for ever fuperfede Saxo Grammaticus; tranflated novels and ballads will, perhaps, be allowed the fources of Romeo, Lear, and The Merchant of Venice; and Shakspeare himself, however unlike Bayes in other particulars, will stand convicted of having transverfed the profe of Holinfhed; and, at the fame time, to prove" that his ftudies lay in his own language,'