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tually taken by a fubfequent labourer in the fame department, Dr. Sewell.

Mr. Pope fuppofed "little ground for the common opinion of his want of learning :" once indeed he made a proper diftinction between learning and languages, as I would be understood to do in my title-page; but unfortunately he forgot it in the course of his difquifition, and endeavoured to persuade himself that Shakspeare's ́acquaintance with the ancients might be actually proved by the fame medium as Jonson's.

Mr. Theobald is "very unwilling to allow him fo poor a scholar, as many have laboured to represent him;" and yet is "cautious of declaring too pofitively on the other fide of the question."

Dr. Warburton hath exposed the weakness of some arguments from fufpected imitations; and yet offers others, which, I doubt not, he could as easily have refuted.

Mr. Upton wonders" with what kind of reasoning any one could be fo far impofed upon, as to imagine that Shakspeare had no learning;" and lathes with much zeal and fatisfaction "the pride and pertness of dunces, who, under fuch a name would gladly fhelter their own idlenefs and ignorance.”

He, like the learned knight, at every anomaly in gram

mar or metre,

Hath hard words ready to fhow why,

And tell what rule he did it by.

How would the old bard have been aftonished to have found, that he had very skilfully given the trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic, COMMONLY called the ithyphallic measure to the Witches in Macbeth! and that now and then a halting verse afforded a most beautiful inftance of the pes proceleufmaticus !

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"But," continues Mr. Upton, "it was a learned age; Roger Afcham affures us, that queen Elizabeth read more Greek every day, than fome dignitaries of the church did Latin in a whole week." This appears very probable; and a pleasant proof it is of the general learning of the times, and of Shakspeare in particular. I wonder, he did not corroborate it with an extract from her injunctions to her clergy, that "fuch as were but mean readers should perufe over before, once or twice, the chapters and homilies, to the intent they might read to the better understanding of the people.”

Dr. Grey declares, that Shakspeare's knowledge in the Greek and Latin tongues cannot reasonably be called in queftion. Dr. Dodd fuppofes it proved, that he was not fuch a novice in learning and antiquity as fome people would pretend. And to clofe the whole, for I fufpect you to be tired of quotation, Mr. Whalley, the ingenious editor of Jonfon, hath written a piece expressly on this fide the question: perhaps from a very excufable partiality, he was willing to draw Shakspeare from the field of nature to claffick ground, where alone, he knew, his author could poffibly cope with him.

Thefe criticks, and many others their coadjutors, have fuppofed themselves able to trace Shakspeare in the writings of the ancients; and have fometimes perfuaded us of their own learning, whatever became of their author's. Plagiarisms have been discovered in every natural defcription and every moral fentiment. Indeed by the kind affiftance of the various Excerpta, Sententia, and Flores, this bufinefs may be effected with very little expence of time or fagacity; as Addison hath demonftrated in his comment on Chevy-chafe, and Wagstaff on Tom Thumb ; and I myself will engage to give you quotations from the elder English writers (for, to own the truth, I was once

idle enough to collect fuch,) which fhall carry with them at least an equal degree of fimilarity. But there can be no occafion of wafting any future time in this department: the world is now in poffeffion of the Marks of Imi

tation.

"Shakspeare however hath frequent allufions to the fals and fables of antiquity." Granted:-and as Mat. Prior fays, to save the effusion of more Chriftian ink, I will endeavour to fhow, how they came to his acquaint

ance.

It is notorious, that much of his matter of fact knowledge is deduced from Plutarch: but in what language he read him, hath yet been the queftion. Mr. Upton is pretty confident of his skill in the original, and corrects accordingly the errors of his copyifts by the Greek standard. Take a few inftances, which will elucidate this matter fufficiently.

In the third act of Antony and Cleopatra, O&tavius reprefents to his courtiers the imperial pomp of those illuftrious lovers, and the arrangement of their dominion,

Unto her

He gave the 'stablishment of Egypt, made her

Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,

Abfolute queen.

Read Libya, fays the critick authoratively, as is plain from Plutarch, Πρώτην μὲν ἀπέφηνε Κλεοπάτραν βασίλισσαν Αἰγύπλε καὶ Κύπρο και ΛΙΒΥΗΣ, καὶ κοίλης Συρίας.

This is very true: Mr. Heath accedes to the correction, and Mr. Johnfon admits it into the text: but turn to the translation, from the French of Amyot, by Thomas North, in folio, 1579, and you will at once fee the origin of the mistake.

"First of all he did eftablish Cleopatra queene of Egypt, of Cyprus, of Lydia, and the lower Syria.” Again, in the fourth act:

My meffenger

He hath whipt with rods, darcs me to perfonal combat,
Cæfar to Antony. Let th' old ruffian know

I have many other ways to die; mean time

Laugh at his challenge.

"What a reply is this?" cries Mr. Upton, " 'tis acknowledging he should fail under the unequal combat. But if we read,

Let the old ruffian 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."

This correction was first made by Sir Thomas Hanmer, and Mr. Johnson hath received it. Moft indifputably it is the fenfe of Plutarch, and given fo in the modern translation but Shakspeare 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, Antony, in his wellknown barangue to the people, repeats a part of the emperor's will:

-To every Roman citizen he gives,
To every fev'ral man, seventy-five drachmas.-
Moreover he hath left you all his walks,

His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this fide Tiber.

* Our

"Our author certainly wrote," fays Mr. Theobald,— "On that fide Tiber

Trans Tiberim-prope Cæfaris hortos.

And Plutarch, whom Shakspeare very diligently studied, exprefsly declares, that he left the publick his gardens and walks, wip1v Tỡ Moraμă, beyond the Tyber."

This emendation likewife hath been adopted by the fubfequent editors; but hear again the old tranflation, where Shakspeare'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 of Tyber." I could furnish you with many more inftances, but these are as good as a thoufand.

Hence had our author his characteristick knowledge of Brutus and Antony, upon which much argumentation for his learning hath been founded: and hence literatim the epitaph on Timon, which, it was once prefumed, he had corrected from the blunders of the Latin verfion, by his own fuperior knowledge of the original.

I cannot however omit a paffage from Mr. Pope. "The Speeches copied from Plutarch in Coriolanus may, I think, be as well made an inftance of the learning of Shakspeare, as those copy'd from Cicero in Catiline, of Ben Jonfon's." Let us inquire into this matter, and transcribe a speech for a fpecimen. Take the famous one of Volumnia:

Should we be filent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We've led fince thy exile. Think with thy felf,
How more unfortunate than all living women

Are we come hither; fince thy fight, which fhould
Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,

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