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had more learning than those who got credit for learning, merely because they could write themselves, on the title-page of any book, comedy, tragedy, tale, or poem, "In artibus magister unius, vel utriusque Academia," why should we not admit our poet, through the opening made for him by his contemporary, the author of "The Polemanteia," into the groves of Academus, and believe that he as well as they had received a university education to qualify him as a poet; that he, as well as others of his time, had prefaced the eating through of his terms at Grey's Inns or the Temple by sizing for some terms at either Oxford or Cambridge, to qualify himself for a lawyer?

His works are, in fact, a spacious garden, every where abounding in such flowers and fruits as are cultivated in universities, and nowhere else brought to such maturity. He appears, indeed, to have been a universal scholar, versed in all the knowledge and philosophy of his times; and, more than any other man on record, perhaps, realizes his own portrait of the madcap Prince of Wales:

"Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish,
You would desire the king were made a prelate;
Here him debate of commonwealth affairs,
And you would say, It hath been all in all his
study.

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music.
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter," &c.

Let him be tried, we would add, by his skill in the art of reasoning, in metaphysics, ethics, morals and criticism, by his purified taste and cultivated judgment, and he will be found-if to those arts we can add a knowledge of the ancient languages-to have been deficient in none of those branches of learning in which an academic course makes men proficient.

But that to his undisputed attainments as a scholar his more disputed claims as a master of the learned languages may be confidently added, will, we think, be admitted without reserve on a candid and unprepossessed consideration of the following circum

stances:

1. His thorough acquaintance with the whole of the ancient mythology, and the ease and propriety with which he avails

himself of it to illustrate and embellish hi subject.

2. The affluence of Latin derivatives wit

which, whether first introduced by himse or adopted from the current stock then i use, he has enriched the poetical languag of his country.

3. His quotations from the Latin classicnumerous, and always appropriate.

4. His frequent translations, in the ordi nary current of his text, of passages from the ancient poets, rendered in a style which for fidelity and elegance, may challenge th best of Ben Jonson's.

5. His having dramatized many Latin and Greek subjects, and executed his task with such general historic truth, such propriet of national manners, such freedom and ye such accuracy, such boldness, together with consistency of character, (consistent, we mean with the original models of Greek and Ro man story,) as appear of necessity to imply an extensive and familiar acquaintance with the ancient literature in which those stories scenes and characters are to be found.

6. And lastly, (listen to this, ye critics and commentators!) he knew and practised the law of the dramatic unities as well and as exactly as the most rigid Greek or Ro man of them all; and his apparent depar ture from them was the result of deliberate judgment and choice.

His competency, however, in all those respects has been more or less questioned by the commentators in occasional notes, by the biographers in their memoirs, and by Dr. Farmer in a formal essay. Believing them all to have been carried away by their prepossessions, we shall endeavor to set them right by a more candid enumeration of facts For the sake of greater distinctness, we dispose of the several objections, in the order, and under the heads of the foregoing classification.

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the copyist's or the printer's mistake than | may be the more certain of this, inasmuch as his. It is where Falstaff's page, rallying the author of this Tale of Troy was a fellowBardolph on the rubicundity of his face, calls dramatist, and a fellow-sharer in the Blackhim a "rascally Althæa's dream," and ex- friars theatre, together with our poet, in 1589, plains his meaning by saying that "Althea the very year in which the poem was pubdreamed she was delivered of a firebrand," lished. But that he was fully aware of the &c. Now, it was Hecuba who dreamed she story of Althæa's brand, that it was no dream, was delivered of a firebrand, of which, we but a reality, we have under his own hand, in have reason to think, Shakspeare could not 2 Henry VI., i. 1, where he alludes to the have been ignorant; and Althaea's firebrand story as it really ran in the ancient legend: was a real one, of which we know he was perfectly cognizant. The page's jest is an "York. Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland obvious allusion to a passage in a very popular poem of George Peele's, entitled, "The Beginning, Accidents, and End of the War of Troy," and published in 1589. Speaking of the birth of Paris, and his mother's alarm-Seeing, therefore, that our poet was aware ing prognostications, the poet observes:

"Behold, at length

She [Hecuba] dreams, and gives her lord to understand

That she should soon bring forth a firebrand, Whose hot and climbing flame should be so great, That Neptune's Troy it would consume with heat." Coupling the thought conveyed in those lines with the sarcasm of the page, and with the droll imagery of a similar character, in which his master elsewhere plays on the countenance of the aforesaid Bardolph, there can be scarcely a doubt but that the allusion refers to the passage, and that Shakspeare was thus (if no otherwise) aware of who the person was that dreamed the dream; and we

* 2 Henry IV., ii. 2.

Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood
As did the fatal brand Althæa burned
Unto the prince's heart of Calydon," &c.

that Hecuba, and not Althæa, was the person who dreamed of the firebrand, we do not hesitate to ascribe the error to the ignorance of the copyist or printer, and would, without scruple, recommend the correction to be inserted in the text of any future edi tion.

2. The Latinities of his diction.

In no instance whatsoever, under this head, has he been found wanting; and although, in numberless cases, he has employed Latin derivatives in senses not familiar to our modern use of them, still he will be found to have employed them in the exact vernacular sense which they bore in the Roman idiom. Would a man uncertain of his knowledge have ventured to commit himself on such a vein of language? Or could a man ignorant of the various and delicate shades of thought conveyed by peculiar words have carried on the practice through works so voluminous as his, and not have left behind him some slips to betray his presumption? Impossible, we should think. But, as he stands unimpeached on this subject, we may dismiss it, and proceed to the consideration of others, on which his competency has been more questioned.

1 Henry IV., iii. 3. Bardolph's face was the subject of much merriment to master and man. That which the page ridicules as the firebrand which Hecuba dreamed of, is by Falstaff caricatured into the "lanthorn on the poop" of an admiral's ship; its owner is "the Knight of the Burning Lamp," it "reminds one of hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning-burning" to swear by it would amount to swearing" by this fire;" it is "an ignis fatuus; a ball of wild-fire;" it is as good against darkness as "links and torches;" it is a "salamander maintained with fire;" and when Sir John declines complying with Bardolph's wish that "it were in his belly," on the ground that "so he should be sure to be heart-burned," is not the allusion to a similar fate impending over Troy, from the indwelling of Hecu-er's essay as the general repertory for objecba's metaphorical firebrand, pointed and complete ?-that firebrand, Paris, to wit,

Whose hot and climbing flame should grow so great,
That Neptune's Troy it would consume with heat:
And, counsel taken of this troublous dream,

The Boothsayers said that not swift Simois' stream
Might serve to quench that fierce devouring fire
That did this brand 'gainst town of Troy conspire."
-See works of George Peele, by the Rev. A. Dyce, London:
1828; ii. 92.

3. His quotation of the Latin poets.
4. His tacit translations from the same.
We have carefully looked through Farm-

tions upon these heads, but have found his
charges so shadowy and fugitive as to leave
us nothing to grapple with. Theobald may
have been pedantic and Warburton fanciful
in spying out recondite beauties and allu-
sions; Upton may have "seen in Shakspeare
more than Shakspeare knew;" and Whalley

6

given the credit of design to mere coinci- as it appears in the poet, but as it is give dences of thought and expression; and in by the grammarian; it is also quoted, as h the detection of such false criticisms lies the adds, in the same form by Udall, in hi scene of Farmer's triumphs. And in such Floures for Latin Speaking, gathered out o he has rendered yeoman's service to both Terence, (1560;) upon which the learne learning and Shakspeare. But is Shakspeare Doctor triumphantly observes:*"The quota to be answerable for the absurdities of his tion from Lilly in The Taming of th commentators? Deducting such triumphs, Shrew,' if indeed it be his, strongly prove however, there is exceedingly little in the the extent of his reading. Had he know celebrated essay to affect the character of Terence, he would not have quoted errone our poet as a scholar competent to the mod-ously from his grammar." This is surely est display of learning which his works non sequitur: he might have done so for exhibit. His quotations, as we have observed, purpose; and if we consider that the line i are correct and applicable. What though thus put into the mouth of a servant who i some of them may have been cited by others attending his young master to the university where he may have found them? May he we see abundant reason and propriety in not as well have found them in their origi- selecting the book of accidence for the autho nal places? Nay, must he not have under-rity, rather than the original work of the stood their meaning and applicability wher- poet. But we deny the inference of its ever he found them? If it be an impeach- showing the extent or the probable extent ment of any man's learning to prove that of our poet's acquaintance with Terence. passages which he cites from the ancients have been cited before, then is not the reputation of almost every modern scholar in danger? then, would even Dr. Farmer himself come through the critical ordeal unblemished? We trow not. Passages cited by two or more persons may have been, in every instance, drawn from the fountain-head; and if so, it makes no difference which of them carried away the pitcher first.

For any

The passage is quoted in the same form by Thomas Deckar, a contemporary dramatist, in his "Bellman's Night Walk," &c.; and although we cannot say for a certainty that Deckar was a university man, yet we may rest assured that he was a Latin scholar, capable of having read Terence in the original and of quoting him thence, by the number of very creditable Latin poems with which he has interspersed his pageant on the pubBut Farmer maintains the utter incompe- lic entry of King James and his Queen tency of our poet to taste of those waters. into London, in March, 1603.† "He remembered," quoth the critic, "per-proof, therefore, which the passage affords of haps enough of his schoolboy learning to Shakspeare's incompetency in Latin, it is put the hig, hæg, hog' into the mouth of just as pregnant with reference to Deckar. Sir Hugh Evans, and might pick up, in the But against Deckar it does not hold good; writers of the time, or the course of his conver- how, then, can it be held valid against Shaksation, a familiar phrase or two of French or speare? Italian; but his studies were most demonstratively confined to nature and his own tongue." To account, however, for some longer and stronger excerpta from the Latin poets, the Doctor is fain to insinuate the facilities afforded by the various excerpta, sententiæ and Flores; and yet is fain to content himself with the adduction of a single instance in which, as well as in others, it is contended that the poet was indebted to his Lilly's Syntax. The case is this: In "The Taming of the Shrew," Act i. sc. 1, Tranio, advising his master Lucentio how to deal with the sudden love with which he has been inspired, quotes from the "Eunuch" of Terence a line,* not

* Redime te captum quam quæas minimo,

"It is scarcely worth while mentioning," says the learned Doctor, "that two or three more Latin passages, which are met with in our author, are immediately transcribed from the chronicle before him." Then why mention them at all, or why bring forward the second especially as an instance of our poet's double barbarity-his ignorance, to wit, "of two very common words in the French and Latin languages?" Suffice it to say, that

* Preface to 2d edition of the Essay, &c. "In terram salicam mulieres ne succedant."-HENRY V., i. 2.

héritier de France; and thus in Latin: PræclarissiNotre très cher fils Henry, roy d'Angleterre, mus filius noster Henricus, rex Anglia et hæres Franciæ.-HENRY V., v. 2.

both passages are honestly and openly copied from Holinshed, in his own words; and there is no need in the latter instance to protect either the historian or the poet from the imputation of ignorance, by supposing præclarissimus a typographical error for præcarissimus, the translation of "très cher." Malone admits that in all the old historians he had seen, as well as Holinshed, he found the same version of the title. It is, therefore, probable that the two titles may have been considered distinct and different, one to be used when the French king wrote to his son-in-law in French, and the other in diplomatic papers written to the English king in Latin. It is true that this must have been a misconception, for in the original treaty of marriage, the Latin word is rightly præcarissimus, but the distinction between a French style for private use, as it were, and a Latin style for public, receives in that document sufficient countenance to justify those who, without having seen the original, may have thought the variation between très cher and præclarissimus intentional. And this we conceive sufficient to explain why Shakspeare must not "indisputably have thought it proper to correct the blunder, had he been acquainted with both the languages."

*

Let us now briefly advert to his tacit translations from the Greek and Latin poets. They are numerously but not ostentatiously scattered throughout his works, and many of them are of extreme fidelity and elegance. This practice has been thought a merit in Ben Jonson, and a considerable collection of such beauties has been made from his works by Mr. Upton. Similar collections-but still very far from complete-have been made from Shakspeare, by Upton and Dr. Whalley; and though neither may have succeeded in every instance to establish his point, enough still remains to show that our poet too was a felicitous and skilful translator; sometimes more elegant than Jonson, and never so verbal and unidiomatic. We meet in Shakspeare no such uncouth and unintelligible Latinisms, "give them words," by way of a translation of or equivalent for Horace's expression of "dare nobis ; verba;" but in all Jonson we find nothing more striking and true to the sense of the original,

and the idiom of both languages, than the
rendering of the following passage from
Horace:
-"ut piget annus

Pupillis, quos dura premit custodia matrum,
Sic mihi tarda fluunt ingrataque tempora."
In the English of Shakspeare:

"She lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame, or a dowager, Long wintering out a young man's revenue."t Many illustrations, equally good, of our poet's competency to translate or paraphrase the ancients successfully might be adduced; but we must refer for them to the selections already mentioned. What we would observe upon in Dr. Farmer's treatment of them is, that he unfairly seizes on the misconceptions or hyper-refinements of the critics, and, having easily exposed their fallacy, leaves the genuine flowers transplanted by the poet's hand quite untouched, but still under the suspicion that their beauties would in like manner vanish if scrutinized with the same jealousy.

Had the Doctor confined his criticism to

Shakspeare's positive failures, rather than gathered triumphs from the mistakes of his critics, he would have displayed more critical candor. "But," quoth he, "the sheet-anchor holds fast; Shakspeare himself has left us

*Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1.

We must make room for one exception. Shakspeare appears to have paraphrased, happily enough, a passage in Anacreon. The lines in Timon of Athens, beginning,

"The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea," &c.,

has all the air of a free translation of the famous chanson à boire of the Teian bard, commencing with

Ἡ γῆ μέλαινα πινει-κ. τ. λ. But no; Farmer now adheres to the version of Ben Jonson's invidious assertion, which represents Greek;" and rather than acknowledge him learned our poet as having (not less Greek, but) "no enough to read Anacreon in the original, is fain to neutralize a former illustration of his own. We have just seen how, from the words très cher and proclarissimus, in Henry V., he pronounced him ignorant of French and Latin; with a strange inconsistency, we now find him reversing the argument, and assuming his ignorance of Greek, because there were two pre-existing translations in Latin and one in French, of the ode in question. But if Shakspeare knew, according to the former argu

* Remarks on Three Plays of Benjamin Jonson, ment, neither French nor Latin, how is his know

&c.: London, 1749.

+ Volpone, i. 4.

ledge of Greek impeached by the pre-existence of those translations?

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some translations from Ovid. This ! And this brings us naturally to the fifth hath been the universal cry, from Mr. Pope consideration on which we are bold to assert himself to the critics of yesterday. Possibly, his sufficiency as a Latin and Greek scholar however, the gentlemen will hesitate a mo- namely, the truthfulness and skill with ment if we tell them that Shakspeare was which he has dramatized the classical sto not the author of these translations." Nor ries above referred to. Our own opinion we did he ever pretend to be so. They were have already delivered; we now come to ascribed to him by a fraudulent publisher; deal with the objections. by him disclaimed with indignation at the "It is notorious," says Dr. Farmer, "that publisher's presumption, and were finally much of his matter-of-fact knowledge is reclaimed by Thomas Heywood, the real deduced from Plutarch; but in what lantranslator of them.* If Dr. Farmer, however, guage he read him, hath yet been the queshad rightly considered the circumstances of tion." Many things had been most absurdly this fraud, he would have found in them written upon this subject by the preceding something rather unfavorable to his own critics; and we are free to acknowledge the hypothesis of Shakspeare's character for acuteness, the wit, and the success with want of learning amongst his contemporaries. which the Doctor exposes the fallacies and The attempt to pass off a set of (what must pedantic inferences of Pope, Theobald, and be called, for the time) very creditable trans-Upton. But, cutting short the extravagances lations of a Latin classic, under the name of a man notoriously ignorant of any language but English, must have been a very hopeless speculation for even the most daring of the curls of the day. The very publication of the book with his name upon the title-page, is proof that the poet enjoyed in his lifetime the popular reputation of being scholar enough for such a performance. He had been sufficiently long before the public to have his pretensions thoroughly canvassed and well known; the practicability, therefore, of such a fraud, is an argument in our favor, drawn from contemporary evidence. Farmer has both overplied and misapplied his vast and various erudition on this occasion. It did not surely require the acumen of a critic so learned and so witty as he, to convince the world that Hamlet's "Old True-penny" comes not according to Upton's conceit " either by way of irony or literally, from the Greek Turаvov;" but it would take more than his learning and pleasantry to efface the impression of our poet's large and habitual converse with the ancients, left upon our minds by a succession of such works as his "Coriolanus," "Julius Cæsar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Timon of Athens," "Troilus and Cressida," and (if it be not spurious) his "Titus Andronicus."

*Heywood's account of the matter is highly creditable to our poet. "He [Shakspeare] was much offended with Master Juggard, [the printer,] that, altogether unknown to him, he had presumed to make so bold with his name."-Apology for Actors; Appendix.

into which they ran, he runs himself as much into the contrary extreme. They quote passages from those plays, and, presuming them to be direct translations from the Greek, not only infer from thence our poet's learning, but proceed to correct the supposititious errors of his text by a reference to the original. Dr. Farmer proves, with a certainty beyond dispute, that in writing those plays, or so much of them as are derived from Plutarch, our poet drew his materials directly from North's translation; and that consequently the text, in accordance with that translation, should be held to be the genuine text, though a deviation from historical fact. So far, he is evidently right; but when he produces those facts as a demonstration of our author's inability to read the Lives of Plutarch in the original, we conceive he overdraws upon his premises. "The Wounds of Civil War," a tragedy by Thomas Lodge, would involve its author in a similar charge of ignorance. In this play, as the editor of Dodsley's Old Plays (vol. viii. 11) observes, Lodge has very much followed the lives of Marius and Sylla, as given by Plutarch: he was a scholar, and it was not necessary, therefore, for him to resort to Sir Thomas North's translation from the French, of which Shakspeare availed himself. It is pretty evident, however, from a comparison of a few passages quoted in the notes in the progress of the play, that Lodge did employ this popular work, although he has varied some of the events, and especially the death of Sylla. Lodge, then, had recourse, in the composition of his play, to North's translation: he

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