Like a ship in her full trim, A swan, so white that you may unto him And with his arched neck this poor fish catch'd. Progresse of the Soul, st. 24, Those highly finished landscapes, the Seasons, are indeed copied from nature, but Thomson sometimes recollected the hand of his master: The stately sailing swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; But to return, as we say on other occasions.-Perhaps the advocates for Shakespeare's knowledge of the Latin language may be more successful. Mr. Gildon 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 Shakespeare's time." The passages on which these sagacious remarks are made, occur in The Midsummer Night's Dream; and exhibit, we see, a clear proof of acquaintance with the Latin classics. But we are not answerable 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 Golding, 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, their very names were exhibited long before in The Romaunt of the Rose: a work you may venture to look into, notwithstanding Master Prynne hath so positively assured us, on the word of John Gerson, that the author is most certainly damned, if he did not care for a serious repentance. Mr. Whalley argues in the same manner, and with the He thinks a passage in The Tempest, same success. High queen of state, Great Juno comes; I know her by her guil— a remarkable instance of Shakespeare's knowledge of an cient poetic story; and that the hint was furnished by the divum incedo regina of Virgil. You know, honest John Taylor, the Water-poet declares that he never learned his Accidence, and that Latin and French were to him Heathen-Greek; yet by the help of Mr. Whalley's argument, I will prove him a learned man, in spite of every thing he may say to the contrary; for thus he makes a gallant address his lady: "Most inestimable magazine of beauty—in whom the port and majesty of Juno, the wisdom of Jove's braine-bred girle, and the feature of Cytherea, have their domestical habitation." In The Merchant of Venice we have an oath "By twoheaded Janus ;" and here, says Dr. Warburton, Shakespeare shews his knowledge in the antique: and so again does the Water-poet, who describes Fortune, Like a Janus with a double face. But Shakespeare hath somewhere a Latin motto, quoth Dr. Sewell; and so hath John Taylor, and a whole poem upon it into the bargain. You perceive, my dear Sir, how vague and indeterminate 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 antiquity, than are any where to be met with in the writings of Shakespeare. I am sorry to trouble you with trifles, yet what must be done, when grave men insist upon them? It should seem to be the opinion of some modern critics, that the personages of classic land began only to be known in England in the time of Shakespeare; or rather, that he particularly had the honour of introducing them to the notice of his countrymen. For instance, Rumour painted full of tongues, gives us a prologue to one of the parts of Henry the Fourth; and, says Dr. Dodd, Shakespeare had doubtless a view to either Virgil or Ovid in their description of Fame. But why so? Stephen Hawes, in his Pastime of Pleasure, had long before exhibited her in the same manner, A goodly lady envyroned about With tongues of fyre....... and so had Sir Thomas More in one of his Pageants: Fame I am called, mervayle you rothing not to mention her elaborate portrait by Chaucer, in The Boke of Fame; and by John Higgins, one of the assistants in The Mirrour for Magistrates, in his Legend of King Albanacte, A very liberal writer on the Beauties of Poetry, who had been more conversant in the ancient literature of other countries than his own, 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 this brow! Hamlel. Illiterate is an ambiguous term: the question is, whether poetic history could be only known by an adept in languages. It is no reflection on this ingenious gentleman, when I say, that I use on this occasion the words of a better critic, who yet was not willing to carry the illiteracy of our poet too far:-" They who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespeare, forget that the pagan imagery was familiar to all the poets of his time; and that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book that he could take into his hands." For not to insist upon Stephen Bateman's Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes, 1577, and several other laborious compilations on the subject, all this and much more mythology might as perfectly have been learned from the Testament of Creseide, and the Fairy Queen, as from a regular Pantheon or Polymetis himself. Mr. Upton, not contented with heathen learning, when he finds it in the text, must necessarily superadd it, when it appears to be wanting; because Shakespeare most certainly hath lost it by accident' VOL I. 8 In Much ado about Nothing, Don Pedro says of the insensible Benedict, "He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-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 Sidney: Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives; Of all those fooles that will have all they see. B. II. c. 14. I know it may be objected, on the authority of such biographers as Theophilus Cibber, and the writer of the Life of Sir Philip, prefixed to the modern editions, that the Arcadia was not published before 1613, and consequently too late for this imitation: but I have a copy in my own possession, printed for W. Ponsonbie, 1590, 4to. which hath escaped the notice of the industrious Ames, and the rest of our typographical antiquaries. Thus likewise every word of antiquity is to be cut down to the classical standard. In a note on the Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, (which, by the way, is not met with in the quarto,) Mr. Theobald informs us, that the very names of the gates of Troy have been barbarously demolished by the editors: and a deal of learned dust he makes in setting them right again; much however to Mr. Heath's satisfaction. Indeed the learning is modestly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly instructed to read, Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scæa, Troian, And Antenorides. But had he looked into the Troy boke of Lydgate, instead of puzzling himself with Dares Phrygius, he would have found the horrid demolition to have been neither the work of Shakespeare nor his editors: Therto his cyte I compassed enuyrowne The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas; pes. Lond. empr. by R. Pynson, 1513, fol. B. II. ch. xi. Our excellent friend, Mr. Hurd, hath borne a noble testimony on our side of the question. "Shakespeare," says this true critic, "owed the felicity of freedom from the bondage of classical superstition, to the want of what is called the advantage of a learned education.-This, as well as a vast superiority of genius, hath contributed to lift this astonishing man to the glory of being esteemed the most original thinker and speaker, since the times of Homer." And hence indisputably the amazing variety of style and manner, unknown to all other writers: an argument of itself sufficient to emancipate Shakespeare from the supposition of a classical training. Yet, to be honest, one imitation is fastened on our poet; which hath been insisted upon likewise by Mr. Upton and Mr. Whalley. You remember it in the famous speech of Claudio in Measure for Measure: Ay, but to die and go we know not where ! &c. 66 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 Platonic 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 torne to yce.' One of their legends, well remembered in the time of Shakespeare, 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 M. Menage quotes a canon upon us: |