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The Yorkshire Tragedy, may be applied on the prefent occafion.

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But you want my opinion:-and from every mark of ftyle and manner, I make no doubt of ascribing it to Shirley. Mr. Langbaine informs us, that he left fome plays in MS.-These were written about the time of the Reftoration, when the accent in queftion was more generally al: tered.

Perhaps the mistake arose from an abbreviation of the name. Mr. Dodsley knew not that the tragedy of Andromana was Shirley's, from the very fame caufe. Thus a whole stream of biographers tell us, that Marston's plays were printed at London, 1633, by the care of William ShakSpeare, the famous comedian.-Here again I fuppose, in fome transcript, the real publisher's name, William Sheares, was abbreviated. No one hath protracted the life of Shakspeare beyond 1616, except Mr. Hume; who is pleased to add a year to it, in contradiction to all manner of evidence.

Shirley is spoken of with contempt in Mae Flecknoe; but his imagination is fometimes fine to an extraordinarý degree. I recollect a paffage in the fourth book of the Paradife Loft, which hath been fufpected of imitation, as a prettiness below the genius of Milton: I mean, where Uriel glides backward and forward to heaven on a fun-beam. Dr. Newton informs us, that this might poffibly be hinted by a picture of Annibal Caracci in the King of France's cabinet: but I am apt to believe that Milton had been ftruck with a portrait in Shirley. Fernando, in the comedy of The Brothers, 1652, describes Jacinta at vefpers:

Her eye did feem to labour with a tear,
Which fuddenly took birth, but overweigh'd

With

With its own fwelling, drop'd upon her bosome
Which by reflexion of her light, appear'd

As nature meant her forrow for an ornament:
After, her looks grew chearfull, and I saw
A fmile fhoot gracefull upward from her eyes,
As if they had gain'd a victory o'er grief,
And with it many beams twisted themselves,
Upon whose golden threads the angels walk
To and again from heaven.-

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You must not think me infected with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton's imitations:

The fwan with arched neck

Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet. Book VII. v. 438, &c.

"The ancient poets," fays Mr. Richardfon, "have not hit upon this beauty; fo lavish have they been in their defcriptions of the fwan. Homer calls the fwan long-necked, δελιχοδείρον; but how much more pittorefque, if he had arched this length of neck?"

For this beauty, however, Milton was beholden to Donne; whose name, I believe, at present is better known than his writings:

Like a ship in her full trim,

A fwan, fo white that you may unto him

Compare all whitneffe, but himselfe to none,

Glided along, and as he glided watch'd,

And with his arched neck this poor fith catch'd.

Progreffe of the Soul, st. 24.

Those highly finished landscapes, the Seafons, are indeed copied from nature, but Thomson fometimes recollected the hand of his master:

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· The stately failing fwan

Gives out his fnowy plumage to the gale;
And arching proud his neck with oary feet,

Bears forward fierce, and guards his offer ifle,
Protective of his young.-

But to return, as we say on other occafions.-Perhaps the advocates for Shakspeare's knowledge of the Latin language may be more fuccessful. Mr. Gildon takes the van. "It is plain, that he was acquainted with the fables of antiquity very well: that fome of the arrows of Cupid are pointed with lead, and others with gold, he found in Ovid; and what he speaks of Dido, in Virgil: nor do I know any translation of these poets so ancient as Shakfpeare's time." The paffages on which these fagacious remarks are made, occur in The Midsummer Night's Dream; and exhibit, we fee, a clear proof of acquaintance with the Latin clafficks. But we are not answerable for Mr. Gildon's ignorance; he might have been told of Caxton and Douglas, of Surrey and Stanyhurft, of Phaer and Twyne, of Fleming and Golding, of Turberville and Churchyard! but these fables were eafily known without the help of either the originals or the tranflations. The fate of Dido had been sung very early by Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; Marlowe had even already introduced her to the stage and Cupid's arrows appear with their characteristick differences in Surrey, in Sidney, in Spenser, and every fonnetteer of the time. Nay, their very names were exhibited long before in The Ramaunt of the Rofe: a work, you may venture to look into, notwithstanding Master Prynne hath so positively assured us, on the word of John Gerfon, that the author is most certainly damned, if he did not care for a ferious repentance.

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Mr. Whalley argues in the fame manner, and with the fame fuccefs. He thinks a paffage in The Tempest,

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a remarkable instance of Shakspeare's knowledge of ancient poetick ftory; and that the hint was furnished by the divúm incedo regina of Virgil.

You know, honeft John Taylor, the Water poet, declares that he never learned his Accidence, and that Latin and French were to him Heathen-Greek; yet by the help of Mr. Whalley's argument, I will prove him a learned man, in spite of every thing he may fay to the contrary: for thus he makes a gallant addrefs his lady:

" Most inestimable magazine of beauty--in whom the port and majesty of Juno, the wisdom of Jove's braine-bred girle, and the feature of Cytherea, have their domestical habitation."

In The Merchant of Venice we have an oath "By twobeaded Janus;" and here, fays Dr. Warburton, Shakspeare shews his knowledge in the antique: and fo again does the Water-poet, who defcribes Fortune,

Like a Fanus with a double face.

But Shakspeare hath fomewhere a Latin motto, quoth Dr. Sewell; and fo hath John Taylor, and a whole poem upon it into the bargain.

You perceive, my dear Sir, how vague and indeterminate such arguments must be: for in fact this sweet fwan of Thames, as Mr. Pope calls him, hath more scraps of Latin, and allusions to antiquity, than are any where to be met with in the writings of Shakspeare. I am forry to trouble you with trifles, yet what must be done, when grave men infist upon them?

It should seem to be the opinion of fome modern criticks, that the perfonages of claffick land began only to be

known

known in England in the time of Shakspeare; or rather, that he particularly had the honour of introducing them to the notice of his countrymen.

For instance,-Rumour painted full of tongues, gives us a prologue to one of the parts of Henry the Fourth; and, says Dr. Dodd, Shakspeare had doubtless a view to either Virgil or Ovid in their description of Fame.

But why fo? Stephen Hawes, in his Paftime of Pleasure, had long before exhibited her in the fame manner,

A goodly lady envyroned about

With tongues of fyre.—

and fo had Sir Thomas More in one of his Pageants:

Fame I am called, mervayle you nothing

Though with tongues I am compaffed all rounde.

not to mention her elaborate portrait by Chaucer, in The Boke of Fame; and by John Higgins, one of the affistants in The Mirrour for Magifirates, in his Legend of King Albanacte.

A very liberal writer on the Beauties of Poetry, who had been more converfant in the ancient literature of other countries than his own, cannot but wonder, that a poet, whofe claffical images are compofed of the finest parts, and breath the very spirit of ancient mythology, fhould pafs for being illiterate:

Sce, what a grace was feated on this brow!
Hyperion's curls: the front of Jove himself:
An eye like Mars to threaten and command:
A ftation like the herald Mercury,
New lighted on a heaven-kiffing hill.

Hamlet.

Illiterate is an ambiguous term: the question is, whether poetick history could be only known by an adept in lan

guages.

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