the original, but North's translation: no one can doubt it. But when this is proved, what then follows? Non constat that he could not have read Plutarch in the original; for did Dr. Farmer suppose that when Lee wrote his Alexander he read Plutarch in Greek; or does any one think that a modern dramatist who should select a hero from Plutarch would think it necessary to read the story not in Langhorne but in the Greek original. It seems to me that it would at least be very pedantic in him to do so. Yet it is for this that Shakespeare is to be set down as ignorant of Greek. He reads Plutarch, when wanted for an ordinary purpose, in English, therefore he could not read him in Greek. Admirable logic! Are there fifty men in England who, if they wanted some general information from Plutarch for mere ordinary purposes, would read him in Greek? I doubt it. However, I give Dr. Farmer the Greek. Jonson has told us that Shakespeare had Small Latin and less Greek; and there is no evidence of the extent to which his acquaintance with that language went. Dr. Farmer with all his ingenuity, and ingenious and beautiful his Essay is, has failed to shew us the extent, and his Plutarch argument, laboured as it is, in fact proves nothing at all. But whatever might be the extent of his grammar learning in that or in the Latin language, it is quite manifest that his mind was richly embued with the treasures which are conserved in those languages; that he had a mind full of the story of Greece and Rome, of Troy and Alexandria, of what is delivered down as parts of authentic history, and of what has descended in the fictions of the poets. The tale of Troy divine was as familiar to him as it has ever been to any scholiast on Homer: the love of Venus and Adonis was as much his as that of any scholar who had spent his life in the study of Moschus and Bion: and Tarquin and Lucretia were the persons whose story he told with all its affecting circumstances when first he gave proof of his devotion to the Muse. Is it probable that he would have chosen subjects such as these had he not known what preclarissimus signified? Is it probable that he would have treated them with an extent of information and an accuracy of knowledge which could not be surpassed had he been as to the classical languages illiterate, or had he not been long and intimately familiar with the names and the circumstances? His fondness for that kind of literature which we call classical is apparent also from his choice of so many classical heroes and classical stories for his dramas. We have Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar and Mark Anthony, Timon and Troilus, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy of Errors, which are all full of classical story; and throughout all his plays there are allusions to innumerable passages and incidents which are what are called classical, and in no one instance has he been detected in investing the heroes with attributes not properly belonging to them, or sinning against any other classical propriety. It is easy to smile at the double-faced Janus, or the gait of Juno; and, if these were all the proofs which the writings of Shakespeare afford of an acquaintance with the ancient mythology, he might be placed, where Farmer irreverently places him, by the side of Taylor, the sculler on the Thames. But these are only a few amongst many which are really recondite. "Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate" is not a name familiar to every ear, nor is Hyperion a name which would be suggested to every pretender. But it is the ease and naturalness with which the classical allusions are introduced to which it is the most important that we should attend. They are not purple patches sewed on to a piece of plain home-spun. They are inwoven in the web; that is, they were deeply inwrought in the Poet's mind, and are produced with the other thoughts which sprung there. How are we to account for this extensive acquaintance and ready production? It can only be that he had studied in the writers whence this species of knowledge is to be obtained. Dr. Farmer maintains that he studied those writers in translations of them into English; and he shews very satisfactorily that Shakespeare read Golding's translation of Ovid. No doubt he did. But it very rarely, if ever, happens, that persons who read only translations have their minds so thoroughly imbued as his was with the men, and their deeds and proper attributes, and use them so freely and so unaffectedly in their works. On the other hand, the possession of all these rich stores of classical fable and classical history is easily explained on the more probable supposition that when a school-boy in the Grammar-School at Stratford he read extensively and learned quickly, leaving it with a far more than the usual share of classical knowledge which a boy brings from a grammarschool; though, as he passed to no other seat of higher learning, and was placed perhaps in circumstances unfavourable, he did not afterwards seek to enlarge in that direction the skill he had acquired. The beautiful line Still climbing trees in the Hesperides. LOVE LABOURS LOST, IV. 3. has been objected to as an offence against propriety, betraying the want of classical knowledge; but it is shewn in the notes that Green, whose scholarship is unquestioned, calls as he does the gardens themselves the Hesperides, and no doubt it was the common phraseology of the time. It is mere pedantry to object to this. Sometimes a false quantity may be detected, but the instances are rare. The most remarkable is that which has been often observed in the name Stephano, which occurs thus in The Merchant of Venice, My friend Stephano signify I pray you, &c. But there was at that time a gross neglect of quantity, in proper names at least, even among scholars in England. Thus writes John Gower, M.A., of Jesus College, Cambridge, in a translation of Ovid's Fasti, 12mo., 1640 :— Your belt, Sir Orion, now you will not shew it, Shakespeare accents the name of Stephano correctly in Is not this Stephăno, my drunken butler? Instances of false quantities in proper names by English writers who were indisputably scholars in Dr. Farmer's sense of the word might be produced in abundance. I shall give one more; And on this floating bridge transport Old Abydos to Sestos fort. This is found in Sir Arthur Gorge's Translation of Lucan, lib. ii. p. 77, a mean performance it is true, but the work of one who will be allowed some Latin scholarship at least. It is also very justly remarked by Mr. Hallam, that we may not unfrequently find Shakespeare using words introduced into the English language from the Latin, in senses or in a manner which shews his acquaintance with their original or etymological meaning. "And thus much," I say with Doctor Farmer, "for the learning of Shakespeare" with respect to the ancient lan guages: It was probably, as Philips says, "not considerable," but what he had was early acquired, inwrought, and sufficient for all the purposes for which it was wanted in after life, though he wrote largely on subjects which belong to that species of learning. On the question of his acquaintance with the modern languages, I shall take higher ground, confining, however, my observations to the Italian and the French. 66 Certainly," observes Dr. Farmer, "some Italian words and phrases appear in the works of Shakespeare." But they are found, as he shews, in other English writers. This is a pleasant argument indeed, to prove that Shakespeare was ignorant of the Italian language; yet this is, in fact, the argument of Dr. Farmer. And so possessed has the public mind been with the persuasion that Shakespeare knew nothing of Italian since the appearance of this very ingenious and specious and entertaining Essay, that whenever mention has been made of an Italian story to which it was supposed that Shakespeare was indebted we have been carefully informed that it had been translated by Painter, or some other Englishman. But who translated Gl' Ingannati of the L'Academici Intronati? Tell me that, and I will unyoke. But the translation must have comprehended the long prose prologue as well as the play itself, for that the prologue as well as the play had been read by Shakespeare is made very probable in the Introductory Remarks on the Twelfth Night. The serious parts of that play have a striking correspondency with the Ingannati, and there cannot be a doubt that the title which he gave to the play was suggested by an obscure expression embedded in the midst of a dull prose prologue of unusual length. Oh, but it might be read to him, prologue and all, by |