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 nothing 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! Hamlet. 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! 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, 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 compassed enuyrowne The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas; The fyfthe Trojana, the syxth Anthonydes, 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. 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 : Si quis dixerit episcopum podagra laborare, anathema sit. Another tells us of the soul of a monk fastened to a rock, which the winds were to blow about for a twelv :month, and purge of its enormities. Indeed this doctrine was before now introduced into poetic 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 or the philosopher. After all, Shakespeare's curiosity might lead him to translations. Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonic 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 the expression is very similar to the bishop's: I will give you his version as concisely as I can; "It is a nedeful thyng to suffer panis and torment-sum in the wyndis, sum under the watter, and in the fire uthir sum:--thus the mony vices Contrakkit in the corpis be done anay Sixte Booke of Eneados, fol. p. 191. It seems, however," that Shakespeare himself in the Tempest hath translated some expressions of Virgil: witness the O dea certe." I presume, we are here directed to the passage, where Ferdinand says of Miranda, after hearing the songs of Ariel, and so very small Latin is sufficient for this formidable translation, that if it be thought any honour to our poet, I am loath to deprive him of it; but his honour is not Let us turn to a real built on such a sandy foundation. translator, and examine whether the idea might not be fully comprehended by an English reader; supposing it necessarily borrowed from Virgil. Hexameters in our own language are almost forgotten; we will quote therefore this time from Stanyhurst: O to thee, fayre virgin, what terme may rightly be fitted? No doubt, a godesse! Edit. 1583. Gabriel Harvey desired only to be "epitaph'd, the inventor of the English hexameter," and for awhile every one would be halting on Roman feet; but the ridicule of our fellow-collegian Hall, in one of his Satires, and the reasoning of Daniel, in his Defence of Rhyme against Campion, presently reduced us to our original Gothic. But to come nearer the purpose, what will you say, if I can shew you, that Shakespeare, when, in the favourite phrase, he had a Latin poet in his eye, most assuredly made use of a translation? 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 Medea in Ovid: and "it proves,' 22 says Mr. Holt, "beyond contradiction, that Shakespeare was perfectly acquainted with the sentiments of the ancients on the subject of enchantments." The original lines are these : Auræque, & venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque, It happens, however, that the translation by Arthur Golding is by no means literal, and Shakespeare hath closely followed it. Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of woods alone, I think it is unnecessary to pursue this any further pecially as more powerful arguments await us. ; es |