T HE queftion, whether Shakefpear had any confiderable knowledge of the learned languages? has been long agitated among the critics. Mr. Farmer is of opinion with thofe, who imagine that he had not; for which he brings feveral arguments. The teftimony of Ben Johnfon fays our author) ftands foremost; and many have held it fufficient to decide the controversy. In the warmeft panegyric that ever was written, he apologizes for what he fuppofed the only defect in his "beloved friend :" "Soul of the age! Th' applaufe, delight, and won der of our ftage *" But Johnfon is by no means our only authority. Drayton, the countryman and acquaintance of Shakespeare, determines his excellence to the natural brain only. Digges, a wit of the town before Shakespeare left the ftage, is very ftrong to the purpose: "Nature only helpt him, for look thorough This whole book, thou shalt find One phrafe from Greeks, nor Nor once from vulgar languages Suckling oppofes his easier strain to the fweets of learned Johnson. Denham affures us, that all he had was from old mother-wit. His native wood-notes wild, every one remembers to be celebrated by Milton. his Fuller, a diligent and equal fearcher after truth and quibbles, declares pofitively, that learning was very little,that nature was all the art used upon him, as he himself, if alive, would confefs it, when he apologized for his untutored lines to his noble patron the earl of Southampton? "Shakespeare however hath frequent allufions to the facts and fables of antiquity."-I will endeavour to fhew how they came to his acquaintance. It is notorious, that much of his matter of fact knowledge is deduced from Plutarch; but in what language he read him, has yet been the queftion. Take a few inftances, which will elucidate this matter fufficiently. In the third act of Anthony and Cleopatra, Octavius reprefents to his courtiers the imperial pomp of thofe illuftrious lovers, and the arrangement of their dominion, "Unto her He gave the 'tablishment of Read Libya, fays Mr. Upton, Ben Johnson, in this copy of verfes, fays that Shakespear had "Small Latin and lefs Greek." Some read no Greek; which (fays Mr. Farmer) was adopted, above a century ago by a panegyrift on Cartwright. autho I have many ways to die ; mean time. Laugh at his challenge." "What a reply is this, cries Mr. Upton, 'tis acknowledging he fhould fall under the unequal combat. But if we read, Let th' old rufian know He hath many other ways to die; mean time I laugh at his challenge." We have the poignancy and the very repartee of Cæfar in Plutarch." Moft indifputably it is the fenfe of Plutarch, and given fo in the modern tranflations: But Shakefpeare was mifled by the ambiguity of the old one, "Antonius fent again to challenge Cæfar to fight him. Cæfar answered that he had many other ways to die than fo." In the third act of Julius Cæfar, Anthony, in his well-known ha-, rangue to the people, repeats a part of the emperor's will: "To every Roman citi zen he gives To every fev'ral man, feventyfive drachmata Moreover he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours, and new planted orchards, On this fide Tyber." "Our author certainly wrote, fays Mr. Theobald, on that fide Tyber.-Trans Tiberimprope Cafaris bortos. And Plutarch, whom Shakespeare very diligently ftudied, exprefsly declares, that he left the public his gardens and walks beyond the Tyber." But hear again the old tranflation where Shakespeare's ftudy lay: "he bequeathed unto every citizen of Rome, seventy-five drachmas a man, and he left his gardens and arbours unto the people, which he had on this fide of the river Tyber." Mr. Farmer proceeds to fhow, that Shakespeare took many of the fubjects for his plays from English authors or tranflators, and not from books in the learned tongue. But to come nearer to the purpofe, what will you fay, (fays hey if I can fhow you, that Shakespeare, when in the favourite phrafe, he had a latin claffic in his eye, most affuredly made ufe of a tranflation. Profpero in the tempeft begins the addrefs to his fpirits, "Ye elves of hills, of ftanding lakes and groves," This fpeech, Dr. Warburton rightly obferves to be borrowed from Medea's in Ovid: And it proves, fays Mr. Holt beyond contradiction, that Shakespeare was perfectly acquainted with the fen timents of the ancients on the sub ject of inchantments. The ori ginal lines are thefe, "Auræque, & venti, montefque, Diique Diique omnes nemorum, diique om nes noctis adeftc." The tranflation of which by Golding is by no means literal, and Shakespeare hath clofely followed it; "Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of woodes alone, Of standing lakes, and of the night, approche ye everych one. In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew, as an apology for his behaviour to Anthonio, rehearses many fympathies and antipathies for which no reason can be rendered, "Some love not a gaping pigAnd others when a bagpipe fings i'th' nofe Cannot contain their urine for affection." This incident, Dr. Warburton fuppofes to be taken from a paffage in Scaliger's Exercitations againft Cardan. And, proceeds the Doctor, to make this jocular ftory ftill more ridiculous, Shakefpeare, I fuppofe, 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 book tranflated from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, a Treatife of Spectres, or ftrange Sights, we have this identical tory from Scaliger; and what is ftill more, a marginal note gives us in all probability the very fact alluded to, as well as the word of Shakefpear, Another gentleman of this quality liued of late in Deuon neere Excefter, who could not endure the playing on a bagpipe." A word in Queen Catherine's character of Wolfey, in Henry the eighth, is brought by the doctor 3 as another argument for the learn ing of Shakespeare. "He was a man Of an unbounded ftomach, ever Ty'd all the kingdom. Simony His own opinion was his law, i'th' prefence He would fay untruths, and be Both in his words and meaning. But where he meant to ruin, His promifes were, as he then Of his own body he was ill, and gave the clergy ill example." The word fuggeftion, fays the critic, is here ufed with great propriety, and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue. And he proceeds to fettle the fenfe of it from the late Roman writers and their gloffers: But Shakespeare's knowledge was from Holingfhed; he follows him verbatim. "This cardinal was of a great ftomach, for he compted himself equal with princes, and by craftie fuggeftion got into his hands innumerable treasure: He forced little on fimonie, and was not pitiful, and flood affectionate in his own opinion: In open prefence he would lie and feie untruth, and was double both in fpeech and meaning: He would promife much and performe little: He was vicious of his bodie, and gaue the clergie euil example." And it is one of the articles of his im peachment peachment in Dr. Fiddes's collections, "That the faid Lord Cardinal got a bull for the fuppreffing certain houses of religion, by his untrue fuggeftion to the pope." A ftronger argument hath been brought from the plot of Hamlet. Dr. Grey and Mr. Whalley affure us, that for this Shakespeare muft have read Saxo Grammaticus in the original, for no tranflation hath been made into any modern language. But the misfortune is that he did not take it from Saxo at all; a novel called the hiftorie of Hamblet was his original: a fragment of which, in black letter, I have feen in the hands of a very curious and intelligent gentleman. Mr. Farmer takes notice of the fuppofition that the Comedy of Errors is founded on the Menæchmi, which is (fays he) notorious: Nor is it lefs fo, that a tranflation of it by W. W. perhaps William Warner, the author of Albion's England, was extant in the time of Shakespeare * But the fheet-anchor holds fast : Shakespeare himself hath left fome tranflations from Ovid, Shakespeare was not the author of thefe tranflations, fays Mr. Farmer, who proves them to have been written by Thomas Hay. wood. He proves likewife a book in profe, (in which are many quotations from the claffics) afcribed to William Shakespeare, to have been written by William Stafford. his fuppofed knowledge of the modern ones. We shall conclude with a curious circumftance relating to Shakespeare's acting the ghoft in his own Hamlet, in which he is faid to have failed. Dr. Lodge, fays Mr. Farmer, who as well as his quondam colleague Greene, was ever peftering the town with pamphlets, publifhed one in the year 1566, called "Wits Miferie, and the Worlds Madnaffe, difcovering the devils One of incarnate of this age." thefe devils is Hate-vertue, who, fays the doctor, "looks as pale as the vifard of the Ghoft, which, cried fo miferably at the theatre, like an oifter-wife, Hamlet Revenge." An effay on the expreffion of the paffions in painting, tranflated from the Italian of the celebrated Alga rotti. ANY have written, and MAD among the reft, the famous Le Brun, on the various changes, that, according to various paffion's, happen in the mufcles of the face, which is, as it were the dumb. tongue of the foul. They obferve, for example, that in fits of auger, the face reddens, the mufcles of the lips puff out, the eyes fparkle; and that on the contrary, in fits of melancholy, the eyes grow motionless and dead, the face pale, and the lips fink in. It may be of fervice to a painter to read thefe, and fuch other remarks; but it will be of infinitely more fervice, to study them in nature itfelf, from This, we are told in the preface of Mr. Thornton's tranflation of the Comedies of Plautus, just published, is in the collection of Mr. Garrick, and is dated Mr. Farmer mentions many other inftances concerning the learning of Shakespear, with refpect to the ancient languages, and makes feveral obfervations on which they have been borrowed, and which exhibits them in that lively manner, which neither tongue nor pen can exprefs. But if a painter is to have immediate recourfe to nature in any thing, it is particularly in treating thofe very minute, and almost imperceptible differences, by which, however, things very different from each other, are often expreffed. This is particularly the cafe with regard to the paffions of laughing and crying, as in thefe, however contrary, the mufcles of the face operate nearly in the fame manner. As the famous Pietro de Cortona was one day finishing the face of a crying child, in a reprefentation of the iron age, with which he was adorning the floor, called the hot bath, in the royal palace of Pitti, Ferdinand II. who happened to be looking over him for his amufement, could not forbear expreffing his approbation, by crying out, oh how well that child cries! to whom the able artist, -Has your majefty a mind to fee how eafy it is to make children laugh? behold, I'll prove it in an inftant; and taking up his pencil, by giving the contour of the mouth a concave turn downwards, inftead of the convex upwards, which it before had, and with little or no alteration in any other part of the face, he made the child, who a litttle before feemed ready to burft its heart with crying, appear in equal danger of burfling its fides with immoderate laughter; and then, by restoring the altered features to their former pofition, he foon fet the child a crying again. According to Leonardo daVinci, the beft matters that a painter can have recourse to in this branch, are those dumb men, who have found out the method of expreffing their fentiments by the motion of their hands, eyes, eye-brows, and in fhort every other part of the body. This advice, no doubt, is very good, but then fuch geftures muft be imitated with great fobriety and moderation, left they fhould appear too ftrong and exaggerated, and the piece fhould fhew nothing but pantomimes, when speaking figures alone are to be exhibited, and fo become theatrical and fecond-hand, or at least look like the copy of theatrical and secondhand nature. We are told ftrange things of the ancient painters of Greece in regard to expreffion, especially of Ariftides, who, in a picture of his, reprefenting a woman wounded to death at a fiege, with a child crawling to her breaft, makes her afraid, left the child, when she was dead, fhould for want of milk, fuck her blood. A Medea murdering her children by Timomachus, was likewife much cried up, as the inge nious artift contrived to express at once in her countenance, both the fury that hurried her on to the commiflion of fo great a crime, and the tenderness of a mother, that feemed to withhold her from it.. Rubens attempted to exprefs fuch a double effect in the face of Mary of Medicis, ftill in pain from laft labour, and at the fame time, full of joy at the birth of a Dauphin. And in the countenance of Sancta Polonia, painted by Tierpolo for St. Anthony's church at Padua, one may, I think, clearly read a mixture of pain from the wound given her by the executioner, and of pleafure from the profpect of paradife opened to her by it. her Fews |