ambitious. And then do I reply, I cannot be too ambitious of Honour, sweet lady." But Armado,

"A refined traveller of Spain;

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain,"

is the only man of "fire-new words." The pedant even laughs at
him as a
"fanatical phantasm.” But such a man Shakspere might
have seen in his own country-town: where, unquestionably, the
schoolmaster and the curate might also have flourished. If he had
found them in books, Wilson's Rhetorike' might as well have sup-
plied the notion of Armado and Holofernes, as Lyly's Euphues' of
the one, or Florio's First Fruits' of the other.

Warburton, in his usual "discourse peremptory," tells us, " by Holofernes is designed a particular character, a pedant and schoolmaster of our author's time, one John Florio, a teacher of the Italian tongue in London, who has given us a small Dictionary of that language, under the title of A World of Words.'" What Warburton asserted Farmer upheld. Florio, says Farmer, had given the first affront, by saying, "the plays that they play in England are neither right comedies nor right tragedies, but representations of histories without any decorum." Florio says this in his Second Fruites,'

published in 1591. Now, if Shakspere felt himself aggrieved at this statement, which was true enough of the English drama before his time, he was betrayed by his desire for revenge into very unusual inconsistencies. For, in truth, the making of a teacher of Italian the prototype of a country schoolmaster, who, whilst he lards his phrases with words of Latin, as if he were construing with his class, holds to the good old English pronunciation, and abhors "such rackers of orthography as to speak dout, fine, when he should say, doubt," &c., is such an absurdity as Shakspere, who understood his art, would never have yielded to through any instigation of caprice or passion. The probability is, that, when Shakspere drew Holofernes, whose name he found in Rabelais,* he felt himself under considerable obligations to John Florio for having given the world "his First Fruites; which yeelde familiar speech, merie proverbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings." This book was printed in 1578. But, according to Warburton, Florio, in 1598, in the preface to a new edition of his World of Words,' is furious upon Shakspere in the following passage: "There is another sort of leering curs, that rather snarl than bite, whereof I could instance in one, who, lighting

* "De faict, l'on luy ensegna ung grand docteur sophiste, nommé maistre Thubal Holoferne." Gargantua, livre i. chap. xiv.

on a good sonnet of a gentleman's, a friend of mine, that loved better to be a poet than to be counted so, called the author a rhymer. Let Aristophanes and his comedians make plays, and scour their mouths on Socrates, those very mouths they make to vilify shall be the means to amplify his virtue." Warburton maintains that the sonnet was Florio's own, and that it was parodied in the "extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer," beginning

"The praiseful princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket." This is very ingenious argument, but somewhat bold; and it appears to us that Thomas Wilson was just as likely to have suggested the alliteration as John Florio. In 'The Arte of Rhetorike,' which we have already quoted, we find this sentence: "Some use over-muche repetition of one letter, as pitifull povertie prayeth for a penie, but puffed presumpcion passeth not a point." Indeed, there are many existing proofs of the excessive prevalence of alliteration in the end of the sixteenth century. Bishop Andrews is notorious for it. Florio seems to have been somewhat of a braggart, for he always signs his name "Resolute John Florio." But, according to the testimony of Sir William Cornwallis, he was far above the character of a fantastical pedant. Speaking of his translation of Montaigne (the book which has now acquired such interest by bearing Shakspere's undoubted autograph), Sir William Cornwallis says, "divers of his (Montaigne's) pieces I have seen translated; they that understand both languages say very well done; and I am able to say (if you will take the word of ignorance), translated into a style admitting as few idle words as our language will endure."* Holofernes, the pedant, who had "lived long on the alms-basket of words "-who had "been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps," was not the man to deserve the praise of writing "a style admitting as few idle words as our language will endure.”

As far then as we have been able to trace, the original comedy of 'Love's Labour's Lost' might have been produced by Shakspere without any personal knowledge of the court language of Euphuism,without any acquaintance with John Florio,-and with a design only to ridicule those extravagancies which were opposed to the maxim of Roger Ascham, the most unpedantic of schoolmasters, "to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do."+ The further intrinsic evidence that this comedy was a very early production is most satisfactory. Coleridge has a very acute remark (which in our minds is worth all that has been written about the learning of * Essays. 1600. + Toxophilus.

Shakspere) as to his early literary habits:-" It is not unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions of this play afford, that, though Shakspere's acquirements in the dead languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had placed him ;-or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in the world as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditations."* The frequent rhymes, the alternate verses,— the familiar metre which has been called doggrel (but which Anstey and Moore have made classical by wit, and by fun even more agreeable than wit)-lines such as

"His face's own margent did quote such amazes,

That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes ;"—

the sonnets full of quaint conceits, or running off into the most playful anacreontics, the skilful management of the pedantry, with a knowledge far beyond the pedantry,-and the happy employment of the ancient mythology,-all justify Coleridge's belief that the materials of this comedy were drawn from the immediate employments of Shakspere's youth. Still the play, when augmented and corrected, might have received many touches derived from the power which he had acquired by experience. If it were not presumptuous to attempt to put our finger upon such passages, we would say that Biron's eloquent speech at the end of the fourth act, beginning

"Have at you then, affection's men at arms,"and Rosaline's amended speech at the end of the play, "Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,'

must be amongst the more important of these augmentations.

PERIOD OF THE ACTION, AND MANNERS.

THERE is no historical foundation for any portion of the action of this comedy. There was no Ferdinand King of Navarre. We have no evidence of a difference between France and Navarre as to possessions in Aquitain. We may place, therefore, the period of the action

*Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 108.

as the period of Elizabeth, for the manners are those of Shakspere's own time. The more remarkable of the customs which are alluded to will be pointed out in our Illustrations.

COSTUME.

CESARE VECELLIO, at the end of his third book (edit. 1598), presents us with the general costume of Navarre at this period. The women appear to have worn a sort of clog or patten, something like the Venetian chioppine; and we are told in the text that some dressed in imitation of the French, some in the style of the Spaniards, while others blended the fashions of both those nations. The well-known costume of Henri Quatre and Philip II. may furnish authority for the dress of the king and nobles of Navarre, and of the lords attending on the Princess of France, who may herself be attired after the fashion of Marguerite de Valois, the sister of Henry III. of France, and first wife of his successor the King of Navarre. (Vide Montfaucon, Monarchie Française.) We subjoin the Spanish gentleman, and the French lady, of 1589, from Vecellio. For the costume of the Muscovites in the mask (Act V.), see Illustrations.

SCENE I.-Navarre. A Park, with a Palace in it.

Enter the KING, BIRON, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.

King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring time,

Th' endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour, which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors !-for so you are,

That war against your own affections,

And the huge army of the world's desires,

"Biron. In all the old copies this name is spelt Berowne. In Act IV., Scene 3, we have a line in which Biron rhymes to moon. We may, therefore, suppose the pronunciation to have been Beroon. Boswell says that all French words of this termination were so pronounced in English; and that Mr. Fox always said Touloon (for Toulon) in the House of Commons.