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With such a flood of soul, that thou were fain,
With explanations of her rapture there,
To vent it to the echoes of the vale;
When, meditating of me, a sweet gale

Brought me upon thee; and thou did'st inherit
My true sense, for the time then, in my spirit;
And I, invisibly, went prompting thee

To those fair greens where thou dids't English me:'

Scarce he had utter'd this, when well I knew
It was my Prince's Homer."

Here we see that Chapman lived on a hill near the village of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, before coming to London, and I have very little doubt that, if those who can look into this matter will do so, and supposing that any records exist by which it may be proved, that Chapman will be found to have taught a school while there. His whole style, and particularly his earlier style, very strongly suggests the pedagogue; his dogmatic and overbearing manner, towards all but scholars like himself, bespeaks the bachelor village schoolmaster of thirty-six. It takes much of the grace of God to preserve a proper proportionate sense of his own importance in any man who lives, as no doubt Chapman did, for about fifteen years, as the high court of appeal in all literary, and in fact, in all other matters, for a rural community. Further evidence confirms this avowal of Chapman's as to his abode during these years, and possibly refers also to the avocation which I have

assigned him. William Browne, in "Britannia's Pastorals," alludes to him as :

“The learned shepherd of fair Hitching Hill.”

All through this play there are undoubted topical and indicative allusions, which, though dark now to us, were full of point to an Elizabethan audience. In the flouting of the characters in the impromptu play of the "Nine Worthies," the gibes directed at Holofernes, who takes the part of "Judas Maccabæus," are much more pointed than at the other characters; they have a sharper touch; the "Judas," the "ass" and the "kissing traitor," I am inclined to believe, have an intended sting and that they refer to some smallness or treachery of Chapman's against Shakespeare.

In the following passage, where Biron, Boyet, Dumain, and Longaville each expend their wit upon Holofernes, we fail at this day to find any wit whatever; and unless these taunts had an indicative or topical value, it is hard to see where the wit came in, even in that day. I shall show in a later chapter where Chapman several times indicates Shakespeare, by alluding in a scurrilous manner to his falcon crest: it occurs to me as possible, that Shakespeare, in the following lines, refers to the rather vainglorious use which Chapman makes of a medallion-with a picture of his own head in the center and this legend on the rim "Georgius Chapmanus Homeri Metaphrastes" as an illustration to the title-page of the earlier issues of his Homeric translations.

“ Hol. I will not be put out of countenance.
"Biron. Because thou hast no face.
"Hol. What is this?

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Boyet. A cittern-head.

Dum. The head of a bodkin.

"Biron. A death's face in a ring.

"Long. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce

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seen.

“ Boyet. The pommel of Caesar's falchion.

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Dum. The carved bone face on a flask.

Biron. Saint George's half-cheek in a brooch. "Dum. Ay, and in a brooch of lead.

"Biron. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth drawer and now forward; for we have put thee in countenance.

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Hol. You have put me out of countenance.

Biron. False : we have given thee faces.

"Hol. But you have out-faced them all.

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Biron. An thou wert a lion, we would do so.
Boyet. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go."

The indicative value which I suggest as possible for these lines is not at all incompatible with the dates which I assign for the play, as these lines, if meant in this manner as well as the more bitterly satirical tone of this whole scene, very probably belongs to the period of the revision of this play by Shakespeare in 1598, when it was also published, very shortly after Chapman's issue of the first seven books of Homer in that year. The references to Achilles and Hector, further on in this same scene, very evidently belong also to the period of revision,

as I shall prove later that Shakespeare wrote "Troilus and Cressida " in this year as a satire upon Chapman's work, and shall also give good reasons for believing that the revision of "Love's Labor's Lost" and the production of "Troilus and Cressida " occupied our poet's attention at about the same time.

In the next chapter I shall endeavor to show the reason for Shakespeare's attack upon Chapman in "Love's Labor's Lost," at the period of its production in 1595.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPMAN'S ATTACKS UPON SHAKESPEARE IN 1594 AND 1595.

It is a rather curious fact that both Shakespeare and Chapman should have reached such an advanced age before publishing any of their poems. At the age of thirty Shakespeare published "Venus and Adonis "; at the age of thirty-five Chapman published his first poem, "The Shadow of Night." Shakespeare's poem met with almost immediate success—a success, too, that was not of a day; as we find that in the eight years following its first appearance it went into seven editions, and into five more editions in the next twenty or twenty-five years. Chapman's "Shadow of Night" was published in 1594, one year later than "Venus and Adonis," and did not see a second print for over forty years (in 1639). In the same year that Chapman published "The Shadow of Night" Shakespeare issued his second poem "Lucrece," which, in turn, met with almost as flattering a reception as "Venus and Adonis." The dedication to “Lucontains strong evidence that Shakespeare reaped something more tangible than mere popularity from his first effort; the passage: "the warrant I have of your honourable disposition, and not the worth of my untutored lines," etc., lends good

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