The quotation is from Taylor's Motto (Spenser Society Reprint of Folio of 1630, p. 217): I was well entred (forty Winters since) As far as possum in my Accidence; And reading but from possum to posset, There I was mir'd, and could no further get. In his Thiefe he says "all my schollership is schullership” (id., p. 282). 164. held horses at the door of the playhouse. This anecdote was given in Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets, 1753, i., p. 130. Johnson appended it, in his edition, to Rowe's Account of Shakespeare (ed. 1765, p. clii), and it was printed in the same year in the Gentleman's Magazine (xxxv., p. 475). The story was told to Pope by Rowe, who got it from Betterton, who in turn had heard it from Davenant; but Rowe wisely doubted its authenticity and did not insert it in his Account (see the Variorum edition of 1803, i., pp. 120-122). -Farmer makes fun of it here, and uses it to vary the Critical. reviewer's description-"as naked with respect to all literary merit as he was when he first went under the ferula" (Crit. Rev. xxiii., p. 50). Dodsley, Robert (1703-1764), publisher and author, declared himself "Untutored by the love of Greece or Rome" in his blank verse poem Agriculture, 1753, canto ii., line 319. His Toy-Shop, a Dramatick Satire, was acted and printed in 1735. The quotation is not verbally accurate; see the New British Theatre, 1787, xvii., p. 48. A word of exceeding good command. 2 Henry IV., iii. 2. 84. 165. learned Rubbish. Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism, line 613. Paths of Nature. Cf. Prior, Charity, line 25. one of the first criticks of the age. Dr. Johnson see Introduction, P. xxvii. a brother of the craft. "Mr. Seward, in his Preface to Beaumont and Fletcher, 10 vols. 8vo., 1750" (Farmer). Cf. Theobald, Introduction to Shakespeare Restored: "Shakespeare's works have always appear'd to me like what he makes his Hamlet compare the world to, an unweeded Garden grown to Seed." contrary to the statute. See Horace, Ars Poetica, 136, etc. 166. Small Latin and less Greek. "This passage of Ben. Jonson, so often quoted, is given us in the admirable preface to the late edition, with a various reading, 'Small Latin and no Greek'; which hath been held up to the publick as a modern sophistication: yet whether an error or not, it was adopted above a century ago by W. Towers, in a panegyrick on Cartwright. His eulogy, with more than fifty others, on this now forgotten poet, was prefixed to the edit. 1651" (Farmer). Johnson corrected the error in subsequent editions. See note, p. 135. "darling project," etc. Kenrick, Review of Dr. Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare, 1765, p. 106 : "Your darling project . . . of invidiously representing him as a varlet, one of the illiterate vulgar." 166. braying faction. See Don Quixote, ii. 25 and 27. those who accuse him, etc. Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy: cf. p. 160. "Greatest commendation" should read " greater commendation." editor in form. See Warburton, p. 97. sufficient to decide the controversy. See Johnson, p. 135. 167. whose memory he honoured. Farmer has added to the quotation from Jonson's Poem "To the Memory of my Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare" a phrase from the passage "De Shakespeare Nostrati" in Jonson's Discoveries: "I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." "Jealousy," cries Mr. Upton. In his Critical Observations, 1748, p. 5. Drayton, "In his Elegie on Poets and Poesie, p. 206. Fol., 1627" (Farmer). Digges, Leonard (1588-1635). "From his Poem 'upon Master William Shakespeare,' intended to have been prefixed, with the other of his composition, to the folio of 1623 and afterward printed in several miscellaneous collections: particularly the spurious edition of Shakespeare's Poems, 1640. Some account of him may be met with in Wood's Athenae" (Farmer). Suckling. Fragmenta Aurea, 1646, p. 35: The sweat of learned Johnson's brain Denham. On Mr. Abraham Cowley,' Poems, 1671, p. 90: some one else. Edward Young, the author of Night Thoughts, in his Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759, p. 31. 168. Hales of Eton. See p. 8. Fuller, Worthies of England, 1662, "Warwickshire," p. 126: "Indeed his Learning was very little, so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any Lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the Earth, so nature it self was all the art which was used upon him." The concluding phrase of Farmer's quotation is taken from an earlier portion of Fuller's description: "William Shakespeare ... in whom three eminent Poets may seem in some sort to be compounded, 1. Martial . . . 2. Ovid. . . 3. Plautus, who was an exact comedian, yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare (if alive) would confess himself." untutored lines. Dedication of the Rape of Lucrece. Mr. Gildon. "Hence perhaps the ill-starr'd rage between this critick and his elder brother, John Dennis, so pathetically lamented in the Dunciad. Whilst the former was persuaded that 'the man who doubts of the learning of Shakespeare hath none of his own,' the latter, above regarding the attack in his private capacity, declares with great patriotick vehemence that he who allows Shakespeare had learning, and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory of Great Britain.' Dennis was expelled his college for attempting to stab a man in the dark: Pope would have been glad of this anecdote" (Farmer). Farmer supplied the details in a letter to Isaac Reed dated Jan. 28, 1794 see the European Magazine, June, 1794, PP. 412-3. 1725. : Sewell, in the preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespear, Pope. See p. 52. Theobald. See p. 75. Warburton, in his notes to Shakespeare, passim. 169. Upton, in his Critical Observations, 1748, pp. 3 and 5. "Hath hard words," etc. Hudibras, 1. i. 85-6. trochaic dimeter, etc. See Upton, Critical Observations, p. 366, etc. "it was a learned age," etc. Id., p. 5. Cf. Hurd's Marks of Imitation, 1757, P. 24. Grey, in his Notes on Shakespeare, 1754, vol. i., p. vii. Dodd, William (1729-1777), the forger, editor of the Beauties of Shakespeare, 1752. Whalley. Farmer is here unfair to Whalley. The Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare shows plainly that Whalley preferred Shakespeare to Jonson. Further, his Enquiry was earlier than his edition of Jonson. In it Whalley expresses the hope "that some Gentleman of Learning would oblige the Public with a correct Edition" " (p. 23). 170. Addison ... Chevy Chase. See the Spectator, Nos. 70 and 74 (May, 1711). Wagstaffe, William (1685-1725), ridiculed Addison's papers on Chevy Chase in A Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb, 1711. Marks of Imitation. Hurd's Letter to Mr. Mason, on the Marks of Imitation was printed in 1757. It was added to his edition of Horace's Epistles to the Pisos and Augustus. as Mat. Prior says,—Alma, i. 241: "And save much Christian ink's effusion." Read Libya. Upton, Critical Observations, p. 255. 171. Heath. "It is extraordinary that this Gentleman should attempt so voluminous a work as the Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, when, he tells us in his Preface, he was not so fortunate as to be furnished with either of the Folio editions, much less any of the ancient Quartos': and even Sir Thomas Hanmer's performance was known to him only by Mr. Warburton's representation"" (Farmer). 171. Thomas North. "I find the character of this work pretty early delineated: ""Twas Greek at first, that Greek was Latin made, That Latin French, that French to English straid : p. 178. Than i' th' same Englishman return'd from France.'" (Farmer). "What a reply is this ?" Upton, Critical Observations, p. 249. "Our author certainly wrote," etc. Theobald, ed. 1733, vi., 172. Epitaph on Timon. "See Theobald's Preface to K. Richard 2d. 8vo, 1720" (Farmer). I cannot however omit, etc. The following passage, down to "from Homer himself" (foot of p. 175) was added in the second edition. "The speeches copy'd from Plutarch," etc. See Pope's Preface, p. 53. Should we be silent. Coriolanus, v. 3. 94, etc. 174. The Sun's a thief. Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 439, etc. Dodd. See the Beauties of Shakespeare, 1752, iii. 285, n. The remark was omitted in the edition of 1780. "our Author," says some one. This quotation is from the criticism of Farmer's Essay in the Critical Review of January, 1767 (vol. xxiii., p. 50; cf. vol. xxi., p. 21). Mynheer De Pauw. See Anacreontis Odae et Fragmenta, Graece et Latine. cum notis Joannis Cornelii de Pauw, Utrecht, 1732. two Latin translations. "By Henry Stephens and Elias Andreas, Paris, 1554, 4to, ten years before the birth of Shakespeare. The former version hath been ascribed without reason to John Dorat. Many other translators appeared before the end of the century and particularly the Ode in question was made popular by Buchanan, whose pieces were soon to be met with in almost every modern language" (Farmer). Puttenham. Arte of English Poesie, iii., ch. xxii. (Arber, p. 259; Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith, ii., p. 171). The "some one of a reasonable good facilitie in translation" is John Southern, whose Musyque of the Beautie of his Mistresse Diana, containing translations from Ronsard, appeared in 1584. 175. Mrs. Lennox, Charlotte Ramsay or Lennox (1720-1804), author of Shakespear Illustrated: or the Novels and Histories on which the Plays of Shakespear are founded, collected and translated from the original Authors, with critical Remarks, 3 vols., 1753, 54. She is better known by her Female Quixote, 1752. Wynken the old story. "It was originally drawn into Englishe by Caxton under the name of the Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye, etc. de Worde printed an edit. Fol. 1503, and there have been several subsequent ones" (Farmer). sweet oblivious antidote. Upton, p. 42, n. Νηπενθές. Odyssey, iv. 221. The Chapman's seven books of the Iliad appeared in 1598. translation of the Iliad was completed in 1611 and that of the Odyssey in 1614. Barclay. "Who list thistory of Patroclus to reade,' etc. Ship of Fooles, 1570, p. 21" (Farmer). 43. Spenser. Farmer quotes in a note from the Faerie Queene, iv. iii. Greek expressions. Upton, p. 321. 176. "Lye in a water-bearer's house," Every Man in his Humour, Act i., Sc. 3. 176. Daniel the Historian, i.e. Samuel Daniel the poet (1562-1619), whose Collection of the Historie of England appeared in 1612 and 1617. Cf. p. 190. Kuster. See note on p. 108. Aristophanis Comoediae undecim. Gr. and Lat. Amst. 1710. Fol., p. 596" (Farmer). Amst. 1710. unyoke (Hamlet, v. 1. 59). See Upton, pp. 321, 322. Orphan heirs (Merry Wives, v. 5. 43), id., p. 322. "Dr. Warburton corrects orphan to ouphen; and not without plausibility, as the word ouphes occurs both before and afterward. But I fancy, in acquiescence to the vulgar doctrine, the address in this line is to a part of the Troop, as Mortals by birth, but adopted by the Fairies: Orphans with respect to their real Parents, but now only dependant on Destiny herself. A few lines from Spenser will sufficiently illustrate the passage" (Farmer). Farmer then quotes from the Faerie Queene, 111. iii. 26. 177. Heath. "Revisal, pp. 75, 323, and 561” (Farmer). Upton. His edition of the Faerie Queene appeared in 1758. William Lilly (1602-1681), astrologer. "History of his Life and Times, p. 102, preserved by his dupe, Mr. Ashmole" (Farmer). Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), who bequeathed his museum and library to the University of Oxford. Truepenny. Upton, p. 26. 178. a legendary ballad. The reference is to King Lear. But the ballad to King Leire and his Three Daughters is of later date than the play. This error in Percy's Reliques was for long repeated by editors and critics. The Palace of Pleasure, "beautified, adorned, and well furnished with pleasaunt Histories and excellent Nouelles, selected out of diuers good and commendable authors by William Painter, Clarke of the Ordinaunce and Armarie," appeared in two volumes in 1566-67; reprinted by Haslewood in 1813 and by Mr. Joseph Jacobs in 1890. English Plutarch. See above. Jacke Drum's Entertainment: or, the Comedie of Pasquill and Katherine, 4to, London, 1601; reprinted 1616 and 1618. |