In Much ado about Nothing, Don Pedro says of the insensible Benedict, "He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him."

This mythology is not recollected in the ancients, and therefore the critic hath no doubt but his author wrote"Henchman,-a page, pusio: and this word seeming too hard for the printer, he translated the little urchin into a hangman, a character no way belonging to him."

But this character was not borrowed from the ancients; -it came from the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney:

Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives;
While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove:
Till now at length that Jove an office gives,
(At Juno's suite who much did Argus love)
In this our world a hangman for to be

Of all those fooles that will have all they see.

B. II. c. 14.

I know it may be objected, on the authority of such biographers as Theophilus Cibber, and the writer of the Life of Sir Philip, prefixed to the modern editions, that the Arcadia was not published before 1613, and too late for this imitation: but I have a copy in my own consequently possession, printed for W. Ponsonbie, 1590, 4to. which hath escaped the notice of the industrious Ames, and the rest of our typographical antiquaries.

Thus likewise every word of antiquity is to be cut down to the classical standard.

In a note on the Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, (which, by the way, is not met with in the quarto,) Mr. Theobald informs us, that the very names of the gates of Troy have been barbarously demolished by the editors: and a deal of learned dust he makes in setting them right again; much however to Mr. Heath's satisfaction. deed the learning is modestly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly instructed to read,

Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scœa, Troian,

And Antenorides.

In

But had he looked into the Troy boke of Lydgate, instead of puzzling himself with Dares Phrygius, he would have found the horrid demolition to have been neither the work of Shakespeare nor his editors:

Therto his cyte compassed enuyrowne
Hadde gates VI to entre into the towne:
The first of all and strengest eke with all,
Largest also and moste pryneypall,
Of myghty byldyng | alone pereless,
Was by the kynge called | Dardanydes;
And in storyelyke as it is founde,
Tymbria was named the seconde;
And the thyrde | called Helyas,

The fourthe gate | hyghte also Cetheas;

The fyfthe Trojana, the syxth Anthonydes,
Stronge and myghty | both in werre and pes.

Lond. empr. by R. Pynson, 1513, fol. B. II. ch. xi.

Our excellent friend, Mr. Hurd, hath borne a noble testimony on our side of the question. "Shakespeare," says this true critic, "owed the felicity of freedom from the bondage of classical superstition, to the want of what is called the advantage of a learned education.-This, as well as a vast superiority of genius, hath contributed to lift this astonishing man to the glory of being esteemed the most original thinker and speaker, since the times of Homer." And hence indisputably the amazing variety of style and manner, unknown to all other writers: an argument of itself sufficient to emancipate Shakespeare from the supposition of a classical training. Yet, to be honest, one imitation is fastened on our poet; which hath been insisted upon likewise by Mr. Upton and Mr. Whalley. You remember it in the famous speech of Claudio in Measure for Measure:

Ay, but to die and go we know not where ! &c.

Most certainly the ideas of "a spirit bathing in fiery floods," of residing "in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," or of being "imprisoned in the viewless winds," are not original in our author; but I am not sure that they came from the Platonic hell of Virgil. The monks also had their hot and their cold hell: "The fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth, and never gyveth lighte," says an old homily:"The seconde is passyng colde, that yf a grete hylle of fyre were casten therein, it sholde torne to yce.' One of their legends, well remembered in the time of Shakespeare, gives us a dialogue between a bishop and a soul tormented in a piece of ice, which was brought to cure a grete brenning heate in his foot: take care you do not interpret this the gout, for I remember M. Menage quotes a canon upon us :

Si quis dixerit episcopum podagra laborare, anathema sit.

Another tells us of the soul of a monk fastened to a rock, which the winds were to blow about for a twelvemonth, and purge of its enormities. Indeed this doctrine was before now introduced into poetic fiction, as you may see in a poem, "where the lover declareth his pains to exceed far the pains of hell," among the many miscellaneous ones subjoined to the works of Surrey. Nay, a very learned and inquisitive Brother-Antiquary, our Greek Professor, hath observed to me on the authority of Blefkenius, that this was the ancient opinion of the inhabitants of Iceland; who were certainly very little read either in the poet or the philosopher.

After all, Shakespeare's curiosity might lead him to translations. Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonic hell into the "punytion of saulis in purgatory:" and it is observable, that when the Ghost informs Hamlet of his doom there,

Till the foul crimes done in his days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away--

the expression is very similar to the bishop's: I will give you his version as concisely as I can; "It is a nedeful thyng to suffer panis and torment-sum in the wyndis, sum under the watter, and in the fire uthir sum:-thus the mony vices

Contrakkit in the corpis be done anay
And purgit.-

Sixte Booke of Eneados, fol. p. 191.

It seems, however, "that Shakespeare himself in the Tempest hath translated some expressions of Virgil: wit ness the O dea certe." I presume, we are here directed to the passage, where Ferdinand says of Miranda, after hearing the songs of Ariel,

and so very small Latin is sufficient for this formidable translation, that if it be thought any honour to our poet, I am loath to deprive him of it; but his honour is not

built on such a sandy foundation. Let us turn to a real translator, and examine whether the idea might not be fully comprehended by an English reader; supposing it necessarily borrowed from Virgil. Hexameters in our own language are almost forgotten; we will quote therefore this time from Stanyhurst:

O to thee, fayre virgin, what terme may rightly be fitted?
Thy tongue, thy visage no mortal frayltie resembleth.
-No doubt, a godesse!

Edit. 1583.

Gabriel Harvey desired only to be "epitaph'd, the inventor of the English hexameter,' " and for awhile every one would be halting on Roman feet; but the ridicule of our fellow-collegian Hall, in one of his Satires, and the reasoning of Daniel, in his Defence of Rhyme against Campion, presently reduced us to our original Gothic.

But to come nearer the purpose, what will you say, if I can shew you, that Shakespeare, when, in the favourite phrase, he had a Latin poet in his eye, most assuredly made use of a translation?

Prospero, in the Tempest, begins the address to his attendant spirits,

Ye elves of hills, of standing lakes, and groves.

This speech, Dr. Warburton rightly observes to be borrowed from Medea in Ovid: and "it proves," says Mr. Holt, "beyond contradiction, that Shakespeare was perfectly acquainted with the sentiments of the ancients on the subject of enchantments." The original lines are these:

Auræque, & venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque,
Diique omnes nemorum, diique omnes noctis, adeste.

It happens, however, that the translation by Arthur Golding is by no means literal, and Shakespeare hath closely followed it.

Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of woods alone,
Of standing lakes, and of the night approche ye everych one.

I think it is unnecessary to pursue this any further; especially as more powerful arguments await us.

In The Merchant of Venice, the Jew, as an apology for his cruelty to Antonio, rehearses many sympathies and antipathies for which no reason can be rendered:

Some love not a gaping pig

And others when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,
Cannot contain their urine for affection.

This incident Dr. Warburton supposes to be taken from a passage in Scaliger's Exercitations against Cardan: "Narrabo tibi jocosam sympathiam Reguli Vasconis equitis: is dum viveret audito phormingis sono, urinam illico facere cogebatur."" And," proceeds the Doctor," to make this jocular story still more ridiculous, Shakespeare, I suppose, translated phorminx by bagpipes."

Here we seem fairly caught ;-for Scaliger's work was never, as the term goes, done into English. But luckily, in an old translation from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, A Treatise of Specters, or straunge Sights, Visions, and Apparitions appearing sensibly unto Men, we have this identical story from Scaliger: and what is still more, a marginal note gives us in all probability the very fact alluded to, as well as the word of Shakespeare: "Another gentleman of this quality liued of late in Deuon neere Excester, who could not endure the playing on a bagpipe."

We may just add, as some observation hath been made upon it, that affection in the sense of sympathy was formerly technical; and so used by Lord Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and many other writers.

A single word in Queen Catherine's character of Wolsey, in Henry VIII. is brought by the Doctor as another argument for the learning of Shakespeare :

He was a man

Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes; one that by suggestion
Ty'd all the kingdom. Simony was fair play.
His own opinion was his law: i'th' presence
He would say untruths, and be ever double
Both in his words and meaning. He was never,
But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.
His promises were, as he then was, mighty;
But his performance, as he now is, nothing.
Of his own body he was ill, and gave
The clergy ill example.

"The word suggestion," says the critic, "is here used