players thought, - was in itself no proof that Shakspere did not elaborate his works with the nicest care. The same thing was said of Fletcher as of him. Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Beaumont and Fletcher's works in 1647, says"Whatever I have seen of Mr. Fletcher's own hand is free from interlining, and his friends affirm he never writ any one thing twice." But the stationer does not put this forth as any proof of carelessness, for he most judiciously adds, "It seems he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his own brain, to shape and attire his notions, to add or lop off before he committed one word to writing, and never touched pen till all was to stand as firm and immutable as if engraven in brass or marble." This is the way, we believe, in which all works of great originality are built up. If Shakspere blotted not a line, it was because he wrote not till he had laid the foundations, and formed the plan, and conceived the ornaments, of his wondrous edifices. The execution of the work was then an easy thing; and the facility was the beautiful result of the previous labour. But if Jonson expressed himself a little petulantly, and perhaps inconsiderately, about the boast of the players, surely nothing can be nobler than the hearty tribute which he pays to the memory of Shakspere :-"I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." Unquestionably this is language which shows that the memory of Shakspere was cherished by others even to idolatry; so that Jonson absolutely adopts an apologetical tone in venturing an observation which can scarcely be considered disparaging-"he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." It was the facility that excited Jonson's critical comparison of Shakspere with himself; and it was in the same way that, when he wrote his noble verses “To the Memory of my Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us," he could not avoid drawing a comparison between his own profound scholarship and Shakspere's practical learning : "If I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To live again, to hear thy buskin tread, Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Nature herself was proud of his designs, с The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please; But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature's family." The interpretation of this passage is certainly not difficult. Its general sense is expressed by Gifford : "Jonson not only sets Shakspeare above his contemporaries, but above the ancients whose works himself idolized, and of whose genuine merits he was perhaps a more competent judge than any scholar of his age." "'* The whole passage was unquestionably meant for praise, whatever opinion might be implied in it as to Shakspere's learning. Looking to the whole. construction and tendency of the passage, it may even be doubted whether Jonson intended to express a direct opinion as to Shakspere's philological attainments. If we paraphrase the passage according to the common notion, it reads thus:And although you knew little Latin and less Greek, ta honour thee out of Latin and Greek I will not seek for names. According to this construction, the poet ought to have written, because "thou hadst small Latin," &c. But without any violence the passage may be read thus:And although thou hadst in thy writings few images derived from Latin, and fewer from Greek authors, I will not thence (on that account) seek for names to honour thee, but call forth thun * Jonson's Works, vol. viii. p. 333. dering Eschylus, &c. It is perfectly clear that Jonson meant to say, and not disparagingly, that Shakspere was not an imitator. Immediately after the mention of Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus, he adds, "Yet must I not give Nature all." The same tone of commendation was taken in Shakspere's time by other writers. Digges says that he neither borrows from the Greeks, imitates the Latins, nor translates from vulgar languages. Drayton has these lines : "Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein, To argue from such passages that the writers meant to reproach Shakspere as an ignorant or even as an unlearned man, in the common sense of the word, was an absurdity that was not fully propounded to the world till the discovery of Dr. Farmer, that, because translations existed from Latin, Italian, and French authors in the time of Shakspere, he was incapable of consulting the originals. This profound logician closes his judicial sentence with the following memorable *Farmer, the most insolent of the race of piddling black-letter bibliographers, has the profligacy not to quote these lines, but to say, "Drayton, the countryman and acquaintance of Shakspere, determines his excellence to the natural brain only." words, which have become the true faith of the antiquarian critics up to this hour :—“ He remembered perhaps enough of his schoolboy learning to put the Hig, hag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans; and might pick up in the writers of the time, or the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian." There is, however, a contemporary testimony to the acquirements of Shakspere which is of somewhat higher value than the assertions of any master" of all such reading as was never read "of one, himself a true poet, who holds that all Shakspere's excellences were his freehold, but that his cunning brain improved his natural gifts: "This and much more which cannot be express'd But by himself, his tongue and his own breast, Was Shakespeare's freehold, which his cunning brain The buskin'd Muse, the Comic Queen, the grand And she whose praise the heavenly body chants;- |