"No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse, to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.

I will example it:

The fox, the ape, and the bumble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three. There's the moral. Now the l'envoy. Until the goose came out of the door And stayed the odds by adding four.

"Moth. A gool l'envoy, ending in the goose; would you desire more?

If Chapman's "Amorous Zodiac " be read with the L'Envoi, and the L'Envoi compared with Costard's and Moth's references, the allusions intended by Shakespeare will, I believe, be recognized.

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The last passage in this play in which the word goose" or "geese" appears is as follows, when, Longaville having read his sonnet, Biron says:

"This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, A green goose a goddess."

I shall in the next chapter show that this is a palpable allusion to Chapman. If this be admitted, the claims I make for the previous passages where the same term appears will, I believe, be justified.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPMAN DISPLAYED AS THE ORIGINAL OF

HOLOFERNES.

THAT Holofernes is a caricature of some one pedantic original, and not merely a type of pedants in general, has long been the opinion of the best Shakespearean critics. The strokes with which this character is drawn are too intimate and personal for any other conclusion.. Mr. Warburton and Dr. Farmer suggested that John Florio, a well-known Anglo-Italian of that day, was Shakespeare's original for this character; their only grounds for this supposition being the somewhat flowery and bombastic preface with which Florio introduced his "World of Words" to the public, upon the issue of that work in 1598. This theory necessarily assigns the production of "Love's Labor's Lost" to a period subsequent to the publication of Florio's book, which alone proves its inconsistency. We may reasonably infer that Shakespeare held Florio in good estimation; we know that he made use of his translations in some of his plays and that one of the few authentic autographs which we have of Shakespeare's was found in a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne's "Essays," which is now preserved in the British Museum. It is quite likely that Florio and Shakespeare were intimate, as both

were, to some extent, protégés of the Earl of Southampton.

I am fully convinced that Shakespeare has caricatured George Chapman in the character of Holofernes.

Whoever will read Chapman's "Shadow of Night," "Ovid's Banquet of Sense," and the sonnet-sequence called "A Coronet for His Mistress Philosophy" with their dedications and glossaries, and will compare them with those parts of "Love's Labor's Lost" in which Holofernes appears, will find such an original for the character there represented as shall not be matched in the whole range of Elizabethan literature; especially when this remarkable likeness is supported by the other evidences in this play and the Sonnets which I have already adduced.

Every fault and foible caricatured in Holofernes will be found in these poems and dedications of Chapman's; the bombastic verbosity and tautology, the erudition gone to seed, the overweening scorn of ignorance, the extravagant similes and farfetched conceits, and the pedantic Latinity, are all not only clearly indicated, but, I believe, I can show, actually parodied in the play. Even the alliteration of the "Playful Princess" doggerel is noticeable in these poems, but particularly so in "The Shadow of Night," where it often spoils otherwise fine lines.

A few of Holofernes' speeches, compared with extracts from the poems and dedications I have mentioned, will prove the caricature.

Holofernes is first introduced into the play, dis

cussing the age and quality of a deer which has been. killed by the Princess; thus:

"Holo. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

Nath. Truly, Master, Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least; but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck of the first head.”

Compare this with the following extract from the dedication to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense":

"Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits, is pedantical and childish; but where it shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with that darkness will I still labor to be shadowed."

And again:

"Dull. 'Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. "Holo. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or, rather, unlettered, or, ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer."

Compare this effort of Holofernes with the following extract from the dedication to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense":

"It serves not a skilful painter's turn, to draw the figure of a face only, to make known who it represents; but he must limn, give lustre, shadow and heightening; which though ignorants will esteem spiced and too curious, yet such as have the judicial perspective will see it hath motion, spirit and life."

And again:

"Dull. I said the deer was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

"Hol. Twice sad simplicity, bis coctus!

O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

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'Nath. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts:

"And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be,

Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he."

Compare the attitude of these scholars, Holofernes and Nathaniel, with the following from Chapman's dedication to "Ovid's Banquet of Sense":

Such is the wilful poverty of judgements, sweet Matthew, wandering like passportless men, in contempt of the divine discipline of poesy, that a man may well fear to frequent their walks. The pro