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. 8 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 Shakspeare 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 critick 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; "While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove: "In this our world a hangman for to be "Of all those fooles that will have all they see." B. II. c. 14. 'Printed amongst the works of Chaucer, but really written by Robert Henderson, or Henryson, according to other authorities It is observable that Hyperion is used by Spenser with the same error in quantity. 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 Indeed the learning is modestly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly instructed to read, "Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scaæa, Troian, But had he looked into the Troy boke of Lydgate,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 Shakspeare nor his edi tors: "Therto his cyte | compassed enuyrowne "And the thyrde | called Helyas, "The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas; 991 Lond. empr. by R. Pynson, 1513, fol. B. II. ch. xi. Our excellent friend Mr. Hurd hath borne a noble 1The Troy Boke was somewhat modernized, and reduced into regular stanzas, about the beginning of the last century, under the name of "The Life and Death of Hector-who fought a hundred mayne Battailes in open Field against the Grecians; wherein there were slaine on both Sides Fourteene Hundred and Sixe Thousand Fourscore and Sixe Men." Fol. no date. This work, Dr. Fuller and several other criticks, have erroneously quoted as the original; and observe in consequence, that "if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper learning, Lydgate's were of a more refined standard for purer language: so that one might mistake him for a modern writer!" Let me here make an observation for the benefit of the next editor of Chaucer. Mr. Urry, probably misled by his predecessor, Speght, was determined, Procrustes-like, to force every line in The Canterbury Tales to the same standard: but a precise number of syllables was not the object of our old poets. Lydgate, after the example of his master, very fairly acknowledges, "Well wot I moche thing is wronge, "Falsely metryd | both of short and longe." and Chaucer himself was persuaded, that the rime might possi bly be : In short, the attention was directed to the casural pause, as the grammarians call it; which is carefully marked in every line of Lydgate and Gascoigne in his Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse, observes very truly of Chaucer, "Whosoeuer do peruse and well consider his workes, he shall find, that although his lines are not always of one selfe same number of syllables, yet beyng redde by one that hath understanding, the longest verse and that which hath most syllables in it, will fall to the eare correspondent unto that which hath fewest syllables in it and likewise that whiche hath in it fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of wordes that hath suche na ́turall sounde, as may seeme equall in length to a verse which hath many moe syllables of lighter accents." 4to. 1575. testimony on our side of the question. "Shakspeare," says this true critick, "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 Shakspeare 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 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 therin, it sholde 2 -- Aliæ panduntur inanes At the ende of the festyuall drawen oute of Legenda aurea 4to. 1508. It was first printed by Caxton, 1483, "in helpe of such clerkes who excuse theym for defaute of bokes, and also by symplenes of connynge." 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 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 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 or the philosopher. 6 After all, Shakspeare'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 " the expression is very similar to the bishop's: I will On all soules daye, p. 152. Mr. afterwards Dr. Lort. • Islandia Descript. Ludg. Bat. 1607, p. 46. |