testimony on our fide 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 aftonishing 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. 66 Most certainly the ideas of a spirit bathing in fiery floods," of refiding " 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 fure, 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 : 3" The seconde is passyng colde, that yf a grete hylle of fyre were casten therin, it sholde 2 Aliæ panduntur inanes 3 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 exeuse 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 foul tormented in a piece of ice, which was brought to cure a grete brenning heate in his foot : 4 take care you do not interpret this the gout, for I remember Mr. Menage quotes a canon upon us : "Si quis dixerit episcopum PODAGRAlaborare, anathema, fit." Another tells us of the foul 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 fee in a poem "where the lover declareth his pains to exceed far the pains of hell," among the many miscellaneous ones fubjoined to the works of Surrey. Nay, a very learned and inquifitive Brother-Antiquary, our Greek Profeffor,5 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 philofopher. After all, Shakspeare's curiofity might lead him to translations. Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonick hell into the " punytion of saulis in purgatory:" and it is obfervable, that when the Ghoft informs Hamlet of his doom there, " Till the foul crimes done in his days of nature the expreffion is very fimilar to the bishop's: I will • On all foules daye, p. 152. 5 Mr. afterwards Dr. Lort. • Islandicæ Descript. Ludg. Bat. 1607, p. 46. give you his version as concisely as I can; " It is a nedeful thyng to fuffer panis and torment-fum in the wyndis, fum under the watter, and in the fire uthir sum :-thus the mony vices • Contrakkit in the corpis be done away And purgit." Sixte Booke of Eneados, fol. p. 191. It seems, however, "that Shakspeare himself in The Tempest hath tranflated some expreffions of Virgil: witness the O dea certe." I presume, we are here directed to the passage, where Ferdinand fays of Miranda, after hearing the songs of Ariel, and so very small Latin is sufficient for this formidable tranflation, that if it be thought any honour to our poet, I am loath to deprive him of it; but his honour is not built on such a sandy foundation.. Let us turn to a real translator, and examine whether the idea might not be fully comprehended by an English reader; fuppofing it necessarily borrowed from Virgil. Hexameters in our own language are almost forgotten; we will quote therefore this time from Stanyhurst: "O to thee, fayre virgin, what terme may rightly be Gabriel Harvey defired only to be epitaph'd, the inventor of the English hexameter," and for a while every one would be halting on Roman feet; but the ridicule of our fellow-collegian Hall, in one of his Satires, and the reasoning of Daniel, in his Defence of Rhyme against Campion, presently reduced us to our original Gothick. But to come nearer the purpose, what will you say, if I can show you, that Shakspeare, when, in the favourite phrafe, he had a Latin poet in his eye, most assuredly made use of a tranflation? Profpero, in The Tempest, begins the address to his attendant Spirits, " Ye elves of hills, of standing lakes, and groves." This fpeech, Dr. Warburton rightly observes to be borrowed from Medea in Ovid: and "it proves,' fays Mr. Holt," "beyond contradiction, that Shakspeare was perfectly acquainted with the fentiments of the ancients on the subject of inchantments." The original lines are these : "Auræque, & venti, montesque, amnefque, lacusque, " Diique omnes nemorum, diique omnes noctis adeste." It happens, however, that the tranflation by Arthur Golding is by no means literal, and Shakspeare hath closely followed it : " Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of woods alone, Of standing lakes, and of the night approche ye everych one." I think it is unnecessary to pursue this any further; especially as more powerful arguments await 7 In some remarks on The Tempest, published under the quaint title of An Attempt to rescue that aunciente English Poet and Play-wrighte, Maister Williaume Shakespeare, from the many Errours, faulfely charged upon him by certaine new-fangled Wittes. Lond. 8vo. 1749, p. 81. * His work is dedicated to the Earl of Leicester in a long epistle in verse, from Berwick, April 20, 1567. us. In The Merchant of Venice, the Jew, as an apology for his cruelty to Antonio, rehearses many Sympathies and antipathies for which no reason can be rendered: "Some love not a gaping pig This incident, Dr. Warburton supposes to be taken from a passage in Scaliger's Exercitations against Cardan : "Narrabo tibi jocosam sympathiam Reguli Vasconis equitis: is dum viveret audito phormingis fono, urinam illico facere cogebatur."" And," proceeds the Doctor, " to make this jocular story still more ridiculous, Shakspeare, I suppose, tranflated phorminx by bagpipes." Here we feem fairly caught ;-for Scaliger's work was never, as the term goes, done into English. But luckily in an old translation from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, A Treatise of Specters, or ftraunge Sights, Vifions, and Apparitions appearing Sensibly unto Men, we have this identical story from Scaliger: and what is still more, a marginal note gives us in all probability the very fact alluded to, as well as the word of Shakspeare : "Another gentleman of this quality liued of late in Deuon neere Excester, who could not endure the playing on a bagpipe."9 • M. Bayle hath delineated the fingular character of our fantaftical author. His work was originally translated by one Zacharie Jones. My edit. is in 4to. 1605, with an anonymous Dedication to the King: the Devonshire story was therefore well known in the time of Shakspeare. The paffage from Scaliger is likewise to be met with in The Optick Glaffe of Humors, |