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 fure, that they came from the Platonick 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 caften therin, it fholde torn to yce." One of their legends, well remembered in the time of Shakspeare, gives us a dialogue between a bishop and a foul tormented in a piece of ice, which was brought to cure a grete brenning beate 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 fit." Another tells us of the foul 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 poetick fiction, as you may fee in a poem " where the lover declareth his pains to exceed far the pains of hell," among the many miscellaneous ones fubjoined to the works of Surrey. Nay, a very learned and inquifitive Brother-Antiquary, our Greek Profeffor, 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 philofopher.

After all, Shakspeare's curiosity might lead him to translations. Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonick bell into the "punytion of faulis in purgatory:" and it is obfervable, that when the Ghoft informs Hamlet of his doom there,

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

"I "It

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

• Contrakkit in the corpis be done away

And purgit." Sixte Booke of Encados, fol. p. 191.

It seems, however, "that Shakspeare himself in the Tempest hath tranflated some expressions of Virgil: witness the O dea certe." I prefume, we are here directed to the passage, where Ferdinand says of Miranda, after hearing the fongs of Ariel,

Most sure, the goddess

"On whom these airs attend."

and so very small Latin is sufficient for this formidable tranflation, 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 fuch a fandy foundation. Let us turn to a real translator, and examine whether the idea might not be fully comprehended by an English reader; fuppofing it neceffarily borrowed from Virgil. Hexameters in our own language

• Islandiæ Descript. Ludg. Bat. 1607, p. 46.

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 godeffe!" Edit. 1583.

Gabriel Harvey defired only to be " epitaph'd, the inventor of the English hexameter," and for a while 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 Gothick.

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

Profpero, in the Tempest, begins the address to his attendant Spirits,

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

This speech, Dr. Warburton rightly obferves to be borrowed from Medea in Ovid: and "it proves," fays Mr. Holt," "beyond contradiction, that Shakspeare was perfectly acquainted with the sentiments of the ancients on the fubject of inchantments." The original lines are these :

Auræque, & venti, montesque, amnefque, lacusque, " Diique omnes nemorum, diique omnes noctis adefte."

It happens, however, that the translation by Arthur

2

Golding is by no means literal, and Shakspeare hath clofely followed it:

woods alone,

" Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of "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 fympathies 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 jocofam fympathiam Reguli Vafconis equitis: is dum viveret audito phormingis fono, urinam illico facere cogebatur.""And," proceeds the Doctor, " to make this jocular story still more ridiculous, Shakspeare, I fuppose, tranflated phorminx by bagpipes."

Here we feem fairly caught ;-for Scaliger's work was never, as the term goes, done into English. But luckily in an old tranflation from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, A Treatise of Specters, or Straunge Sights, Visions, and Apparitions appearing fenfibly 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 Shakspeare: "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 fome 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 fingle word in Queen Catherine's character of Wolfey, in Henry VIII. is brought by the Doctor as another argument for the learning of Shakspeare :

He was a man

"Of an unbounded ftomach, 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' prefence
"He would fay 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 critick, " is here ufed with great propriety, and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue:" and he proceeds to fettle the fenfe of it from the late Roman writers and their gloffers. But Shakspeare's knowledge was from Holinshed, whom he follows verbatim :

" This cardinal was of a great ftomach, for he compted himself equal with princes, and by craftie fuggeftion got into his hands innumerable treafure: