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contrary, the Irish laureat, Mr. Victor, remarks, (and were it true, it would be certainly decisive) that the plot is borrowed from a novel of Cervantes, not published till the year after Shakspeare's death. But unluckily the fame novel appears in a part of Don Quixote, which was printed in Spanish, 1605, and in English by Shelton, 1612.-The fame reafoning however, which exculpated our author from The Yorkshire Tragedy, may be applied on the prefent occafion.

But you want my opinion:- and from every mark of style and manner, I make no doubt of afcribing it to Shirley. Mr. Langbaine informs us, that he left fome plays in MS.-These were written about the time of the Restoration, when the accent in question was more generally altered.

Perhaps the mistake arose from an abbreviation of the name. Mr. Dodsley knew not that the tragedy of Andromana was Shirley's, from the very fame cause. Thus a whole stream of biographers tell us, that Marston's plays were printed at London, 1633, "by the care of William Shakespeare, the famous comedian." Here again I suppose, in some transcript, the real publisher's name, William Sheares, was abbreviated. No one hath protracted the life of Shakspeare beyond 1616, except Mr. Hume; who is pleased to add a year to it, in contradiction to all manner of evidence.

Shirley is spoken of with contempt in Mac Flecknoe; but his imagination is sometimes fine to an extraordinary degree. I recollect a passage in the fourth book of the Paradise Loft, which hath been fufpected of imitation, as a prettiness below the genius of Milton: I mean, where Uriel glides backward and forward to heaven on a fun-beam. Dr. Newton informs us, that this might possibly be hinted by a picture of Annibal Caracci in the King of France's cabinet: but I am apt to believe that Milton had been struck with a portrait in Shirley. Fernando, in the comedy of The Brothers, 1652, defcribes Jacinta at vefpers:

"Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
"Which suddenly took birth, but overweigh'd
"With its own swelling, drop'd upon her bosome;
"Which by reflexion of her light, appear'd
"As nature meant her forrow for an ornament:
"After, her looks grew chearfull, and I faw
"A fmile shoot gracefull upward from her eyes,
"As if they had gain'd a victory o'er grief,
" And with it many beams twisted themselves,

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Upon whose golden threads the angels walk

"To and again from heaven."

You must not think me infected with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton's imitations:

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The swan with arched neck
"Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
"Her state with oary feet." Book VII. v. 438, &c.

"The ancient poets, says Mr. Richardfon, have not hit upon this beauty; so lavish have they been in their defcriptions of the fwan. Homer calls the fwan long-necked, δελιχοδείρον; but how much more pittoresque, if he had arched this length of neck?"

For this beauty however, Milton was beholden to Donne; whose name, I believe, at present is better known than his writings:

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5 Middleton, in an obfcure play called A Game at Cheffe, hatk some very pleasing lines on a fimilar occafion:

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Upon those lips, the sweete fresh buds of youth,

"The holy dewe of prayer lies like pearle,

Dropt from the opening eye-lids of the morne

Upon the bashfull rofc."

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Compare all whitenesse, but himselfe to none,

"Glided along, and as he glided watch'd,

" And with his arched neck this poore fish catch'd.-"

Progreffe 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 failing swan

"Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;

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And arching proud his neck with oary feet,

Bears forward fierce, and guards his ofier ifle, " Protective of his young."

But to return, as we say on other occafions.Perhaps the advocates for Shakspeare's knowledge of the Latin language may be more fuccefsful. 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 tranflation of these poets fo ancient as Shakspeare'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 classicks. 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 eafily 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 characteristick differences in Surrey, in Sidney, VOL. II.

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in Spenser, and every fonnetteer of the time. Nay, their very names were exhibited long before in The Romaunt of the Rofe: a work, you may venture to look into, notwithstanding Master Prynne hath fo positively affured us, on the word of John Gerfon, that the author is most certainly damned, if he did not care for a ferious repentance."

Mr. Whalley argues in the same manner, and with the same success. He thinks a passage in The Tempest,

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- High queen of state,

"Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait."

a remarkable instance of Shakspeare's knowledge of ancient poetick story; and that the hint was furnished by the divûm incedo regina of Virgil.

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You know, honeft 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,

Had our zealous puritan been acquainted with the real crime of De Mehun, he would not have joined in the clamour against him. Poor Jehan, it seems, had raised the expectations of a monaftery in France, by the legacy of a great cheft, and the weighty contents of it; but it proved to be filled with nothing better than vetches. The friars enraged at the ridicule and difappointment, would not fuffer him to have chriftian burial. See the Hon. Mr. Barrington's very learned and curious Obfervations on the Statutes, 4to. 1766, p. 24. From the Annales d'Aquitaine. Par. 1537.

Our author had his full share in distressing the spirit of this restless man. "Some Play-books are grown from Quarto into Folio; which yet bear so good a price and fale, that I cannot but with griefe relate it. -Shackspeer's Plaies are printed in the best Crowne-paper, far better than most Bibles!"

7 Others would give up this paffage for the vera incessu patuit dea; but I am not able to fee any improvement in the matter: even fuppofing the poet had been fpeaking of Juno, and no previous tranflation were extant.

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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 two-headed Fanus;" and here, says Dr. Warburton, Shakspeare shews his knowledge in the antique: and so again does the Water-poet, who defcribes Fortune,

" Like a Janus with a double face."

But Shakspeare hath somewhere a Latin motto, quoth Dr. Sewell; and fo hath John Taylor, and a whole poem upon it into the bargain.

You perceive, my dear Sir, how vague and indeterminate fuch arguments must be: for in fact this fweet 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

• This passage recalls to my memory a very extraordinary fact. A few years ago, at a great court on the continent, a countryman of ours of high rank and character, [Sir C. H. W.) exhibited with many other candidates his complimental epigram on the birth-day, and carried the prize in triumph:

"O Regina orbis prima & pulcherrima: ridens

"Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."

Literally stolen from Angerianus,

"Tres quondam nudas vidit Priameius heros

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Luce deas; video tres quoque luce deas.
"Hoc majus; tres uno in corpore: Cælia ridens
Eft Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."
Delitiæ Ital. Poet. by Gruter, under the anagrammatic name of
Ranutius Gherus, 1608, V. I. p. 189.

Perhaps the latter part of the epigram was met with in a whimfical book, which had its day of fame, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. 1652, 6th edit. p. 520.

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