Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare Part 1

Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare.

by D. Nichol Smith.

PREFACE.

The purpose of this book is to give an account of Shakespeare's reputation during the eighteenth century, and to suggest that there are grounds for reconsidering the common opinion that the century did not give him his due. The nine Essays or Prefaces here reprinted may claim to represent the chief phases of Shakespearian study from the days of Dryden to those of Coleridge. It is one of the evils following in the train of the romantic revival that the judgments of the older school have been discredited or forgotten. The present volume shows that the eighteenth century knew many things which the nineteenth has rediscovered for itself.

It is at least eighty years since most of these essays were reprinted.

Rowe's _Account of Shakespeare_ is given in its original and complete form for the first time, it is believed, since 1714; what was printed in the early Variorum editions, and previously in almost every edition since 1725, was Pope's version of Rowe's _Account_. Dennis's Essay has not appeared since the author republished it in 1721. In all cases the texts have been collated with the originals; and the more important changes in the editions published in the lifetime of the author are indicated in the Introduction or Notes.

The Introduction has been planned to show the main lines in the development of Shakespeare's reputation, and to prove that the new criticism, which is said to begin with Coleridge, takes its rise as early as the third quarter of the eighteenth century. On the question of Theobald's qualifications as an editor, it would appear that we must subscribe to the deliberate verdict of Johnson. We require strong evidence before we may disregard contemporary opinion, and in Theobald's case there is abundant evidence to confirm Johnson's view. Johnson's own edition, on the other hand, has not received justice during the last century.

It is a pleasure to the Editor to record his obligations to Professor Raleigh, Mr. Gregory Smith, and Mr. J. H. Lobban.

EDINBURGH, _October_, 1903.

INTRODUCTION. SHAKESPEARIAN CRITICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The early nineteenth century was too readily convinced by Coleridge and Hazlitt that they were the first to recognise and to explain the greatness of Shakespeare. If amends have recently been made to the literary ideals of Pope and Johnson, the reaction has not yet extended to Shakespearian criticism. Are we not still inclined to hold the verdicts of Hume and Chesterfield as representative of eighteenth-century opinion, and to find proof of a lack of appreciation in the editorial travesties of the playhouse? To this century, as much as to the nineteenth, Shakespeare was the glory of English letters. So Pope and Johnson had stated in unequivocal language, which should not have been forgotten. "He is not so much an imitator as an instrument of Nature," said Pope, "and 'tis not so just to say that he speaks from her as that she speaks through him"; and Johnson declared that "the stream of time, which is continually was.h.i.+ng the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, pa.s.ses without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare." But Pope and Johnson had ventured to point out, in the honesty of their criticism, that Shakespeare was not free from faults; and it was this which the nineteenth century chose to remark.

Johnson's Preface in particular was remembered only to be despised. It is not rash to say that at the present time the majority of those who chance to speak of it p.r.o.nounce it a discreditable performance.

This false att.i.tude to the eighteenth century had its nemesis in the belief that we were awakened by foreigners to the greatness of Shakespeare. Even one so eminently sane as Hazlitt lent support to this opinion. "We will confess," says the Preface to the _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_, "that some little jealousy of the character of the national understanding was not without its share in producing the following undertaking, for we were piqued that it should be reserved for a foreign critic to give reasons for the faith which we English have in Shakespeare"; and the whole Preface resolves itself, however reluctantly, into praise of Schlegel and censure of Johnson. When a thorough Englishman writes thus, it is not surprising that Germany should have claimed to be the first to give Shakespeare his true place. The heresy has been exposed; but even the slightest investigation of eighteenth-century opinion, or the mere recollection of what Dryden had said, should have prevented its rise.

Though Hazlitt took upon himself the defence of the national intelligence, he incorporated in his Preface a long pa.s.sage from Schlegel, because, in his opinion, no English critic had shown like enthusiasm or philosophical acuteness. We cannot regret the delusion if we owe to it the _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_, but his patriotic task would have been easier, and might even have appeared unnecessary, had he known that many of Schlegel's acute and enthusiastic observations had been antic.i.p.ated at home.

Even those who are willing to give the eighteenth century its due have not recognised how it appreciated Shakespeare. At no time in this century was he not popular. The author of _Esmond_ tells us that Shakespeare was quite out of fas.h.i.+on until Steele brought him back into the mode.(1) Theatrical records would alone be sufficient to show that the ascription of this honour to Steele is an injustice to his contemporaries. In the year that the _Tatler_ was begun, Rowe brought out his edition of the "best of our poets"; and a reissue was called for five years later. It is said by Johnson(2) that Pope's edition drew the public attention to Shakespeare's works, which, though often mentioned, had been little read. Henceforward there was certainly an increase in the number of critical investigations, but if Shakespeare had been little read, how are we to explain the coffee-house discussions of which we seem to catch echoes in the periodical literature? The allusions in the _Spectator_, or the essays in the _Censor_, must have been addressed to a public which knew him. Dennis, who "read him over and over and still remained unsatiated," tells how he was accused, by blind admirers of the poet, of lack of veneration, because he had ventured to criticise, and how he had appealed from a private discussion to the judgment of the public. "Above all I am pleased," says the _Guardian_, "in observing that the Tragedies of Shakespeare, which in my youthful days have so frequently filled my eyes with tears, hold their rank still, and are the great support of our theatre."(3) Theobald could say that "this author is grown so universal a book that there are very few studies or collections of books, though small, amongst which it does not hold a place"; and he could add that "there is scarce a poet that our English tongue boasts of who is more the subject of the Ladies'

reading."(4) It would be difficult to explain away these statements. The critical interest in Shakespeare occasioned by Pope's edition may have increased the knowledge of him, but he had been regularly cited, long before Pope's day, as England's representative genius. To argue that he had ever been out of favour we must rely on later statements, and they are presumably less trustworthy than those which are contemporary. Lyttelton remarked that a veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of the national religion, and the only part in which even men of sense are fanatics;(5) and Gibbon spoke of the "idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman."(6) The present volume will show how the eighteenth century could almost lose itself in panegyric of Shakespeare. The evidence is so overwhelming that it is hard to understand how the century's respect for Shakespeare was ever doubted. When Tom Jones took Partridge to the gallery of Drury Lane, the play was _Hamlet_. The fas.h.i.+onable topics on which Mr.

Thornhill's friends from town would talk, to the embarra.s.sment of the Primroses and the Flamboroughs, were "pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical gla.s.ses." The greatest poet of the century played a leading part in erecting the statue in the Poets' Corner. And it was an eighteenth-century actor who inst.i.tuted the Stratford celebrations.

During the entire century Shakespeare dominated the stage. He was more to the actor then, and more familiar to the theatre-goer, than he is now. It is true that from Betterton's days to Garrick's, and later, his plays were commonly acted from mangled versions. But these versions were of two distinct types. The one respected the rules of the cla.s.sical drama, the other indulged the license of pantomime. The one was the labour of the pedant theorist, the other was rather the improvisation of the theatre manager. And if the former were truly representative of the taste of the century, as has sometimes been implied, it has to be explained how they were not so popular as the latter. "Our taste has gone back a whole century," says the strolling player in the _Vicar of Wakefield_,(7) "Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and all the plays of Shakespeare are the only things that go down." The whole pa.s.sage is a satire on Garrick(8) and a gibe at Drury Lane: "The public go only to be amused, and find themselves happy when they can enjoy a pantomime under the sanction of Jonson's or Shakespeare's name." But, whatever was done with Shakespeare's plays, they were the very life of the theatre. When we remember also the number of editions which were published, and the controversies to which they gave rise, as well as the fact that the two literary dictators were among his editors, we are prompted to ask, What century has felt the influence of Shakespeare more than the eighteenth?

The century's interest in Shakespeare shows itself in four main phases.

The first deals with his neglect of the so-called rules of the drama; the second determines what was the extent of his learning; the third considers the treatment of his text; and the fourth, more purely aesthetic, shows his value as a delineator of character. The following remarks take these questions in order; and a concluding section gives an account of the individual essays here reprinted. Though the phases are closely connected and overlap to some extent, the order in which they are here treated accords in the main with their chronological sequence.

I.

Dryden is the father of Shakespearian criticism. Though he disguised his veneration at times, he expressed his true faith when he wrote, deliberately, the fervent estimate in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_.

Johnson saw that Pope had expanded it, and his own experience made him say that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, had not done much more than diffuse and paraphrase this "epitome of excellence." But concurrently on to Johnson's time we can trace the influence of Thomas Rymer, who, in his _Short View of Tragedy_, had championed the cla.s.sical drama, and had gone as far in abuse as his greater contemporary had gone in praise. The authority which each exerted is well ill.u.s.trated by Rowe's _Account of Shakespeare_. Rowe is of the party of Dryden, but he cannot refrain from replying to Rymer, though he has resolved to enter into no critical controversy. He says he will not inquire into the justness of Rymer's remarks, and yet he replies to him in two pa.s.sages. That these were silently omitted by Pope when he included the _Account of Shakespeare_ in his own edition in 1725 does not mean that Rymer was already being forgotten. We know from other sources that Pope rated his abilities very highly. But the condensed form in which the _Account_ was regularly reprinted does not convey so plainly as the original the influence of the rival schools at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In addition to the pa.s.sages on Rymer, Pope omitted several valuable allusions to Dryden. The influence of Dryden, however, is plain enough. He seems to have been ever present to Rowe, suggesting ideas to be accepted or refuted. Rowe must have been indebted to the conversation of Dryden as well as to the researches of Betterton.

Rowe's own dramatic work is an interesting comment on the critical portions of his _Account of Shakespeare_. When he professes to have taken Shakespeare as his model,(9) which shows that his editorial work had taught him the trick of an occasional line contrary to the normal rules of blank verse. Notwithstanding a brave prologue, he was not able to shake himself free from the rules, which tightened their grip on English tragedy till they choked it. His regard for Shakespeare did not give him courage for the addition of a comic element or an underplot. He must obey the "hampering critics," though his avowed model had ignored them.

Accordingly, in his more deliberate prose criticism we find, amid his veneration of Shakespeare, his regard for the rules of the cla.s.sical drama. The faults of Shakespeare, we read, were not so much his own as those of his time, for "tragi-comedy was the common mistake of that age,"

and there was as yet no definite knowledge of how a play should be constructed.

The burden of Rowe's criticism is that "strength and nature made amends for art." The line might serve as the text of many of the early appreciations of Shakespeare. Though the critics all resented Rymer's treatment of the poet, some of them stood by his doctrines. They might appease this resentment by protesting against his manners or refuting his plea for a dramatic chorus; but on the whole they recognised the claims of the cla.s.sical models. The more the dramatic fervour failed, the more the professed critics counselled observance of the rules. In 1702 Farquhar had pleaded for the freedom of the English stage in his _Discourse upon Comedy_, but his arguments were unavailing. The duller men found it easier to support the rigid doctrines, which had been fully expounded by the French critics. The seventh or supplementary volume of Rowe's edition of Shakespeare was introduced by Charles Gildon's _Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome, and __ England_, which, as the t.i.tle shows, was a laboured exposition of the cla.s.sical doctrines. Gildon had begun as an enemy of Rymer. In 1694 he had published _Some Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy and an Attempt at a Vindication of Shakespeare_. Therein he had spoken of "n.o.ble irregularity," and censured the "graver pedants" of the age. By 1710 he is a grave pedant himself. In 1694 he had said that Rymer had scarce produced one criticism that was not borrowed from the French writers; in 1710 the remark is now applicable to its author. Gildon's further descent as a critic is evident eight years later in his _Complete Art of Poetry_. He is now a slave to the French doctrine of the rules. He confesses himself the less ready to pardon the "monstrous absurdities" of Shakespeare, as one or two plays, such as the _Tempest_, are "very near a regularity." Yet he acknowledges that Shakespeare abounds in beauties, and he makes some reparation by including a long list of his finer pa.s.sages. Gildon was a man whose ideas took their colour from his surroundings. In the days of his acquaintances.h.i.+p with Dryden he appreciated Shakespeare more heartily than when he was left to the friends.h.i.+p of Dennis or the favours of the Duke of Buckinghams.h.i.+re.

His _Art of Poetry_ is a dishonest compilation, which owes what value it has to the sprinkling of contemporary allusions. It even incorporates, without any acknowledgment, long pa.s.sages from Sidney's _Apologie_. We should be tempted to believe that Gildon merely put his name to a hack-work collection, were it not that there is a gradual deterioration in his criticism.

John Dennis also replied to Rymer's _Short View_, and was cla.s.sed afterwards as one of Rymer's disciples. In his _Impartial Critick_ (1693) he endeavoured to show that the methods of the ancient Greek tragedy were not all suitable to the modern English theatre. To introduce a chorus, as Rymer had recommended, or to expel love from the stage, would, he argued, only ruin the English drama. But his belief in the cla.s.sical rules made him turn the _Merry Wives_ into the _Comical Gallant_. As he found in the original three actions, each independent of the other, he had set himself to make the whole "depend on one common centre." In the Dedication to the letters _On the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare_ we read that Aristotle, "who may be call'd the Legislator of Parna.s.sus, wrote the laws of tragedy so exactly and so truly in reason and nature that succeeding criticks have writ justly and reasonably upon that art no farther than they have adhered to their great master's notions." But at the very beginning of the letters themselves he says that "Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world e'er saw." Notwithstanding his p.r.o.nounced cla.s.sical taste, his sense of the greatness of Shakespeare is as strong as Rowe's, and much stronger than Gildon's. His writings prove him a man of competent scholars.h.i.+p, who had thought out his literary doctrines for himself, and could admire beauty in other than cla.s.sical garb. The result is that at many points his opinions are at marked variance with those of Rymer, for whom, however, he had much respect.

Rymer, for instance, had said that Shakespeare's genius lay in comedy, but the main contention of Dennis's letters is that he had an unequalled gift for tragedy. As a critic Dennis is greatly superior to Rymer and his disciples. The ancients guided his taste without blinding him to modern excellence.

Even Lewis Theobald, whom some would consider Shakespeare's greatest friend in this century, believed in the rules. He complied with the taste of the town when he wrote pantomimes, but he was a sterner man when he posed as a critic. He would then speak of the "general absurdities of Shakespeare," and the "errors" in the structure of his plays. He pa.s.sed this criticism both in his edition of Shakespeare and in the early articles in the _Censor_ on _King Lear_, which are also of considerable historical interest as being the first essays devoted exclusively to an examination of a single Shakespearian play. His complacent belief in the rules prompted him to correct _Richard II._ "The many scattered beauties which I have long admired," he says navely in the Preface, "induced me to think they would have stronger charms if they were interwoven in a regular Fable." No less confident is a note on _Love's Labours Lost_: "Besides the exact regularity of the rules of art, which the author has happened to preserve in some few of his pieces, this is demonstration, I think, that though he has more frequently transgressed the unity of Time by cramming years into the compa.s.s of a play, yet he knew the absurdity of so doing, and was not unacquainted with the rule to the contrary."(10) Theobald was a critic of the same type as Gildon. Each had profound respect for what he took to be the accredited doctrines. If on certain points Theobald's ideas were liable to change, the explanation is that he was amenable to the opinions of others. We do not find in Theobald's criticism the courage of originality.

There is little about the rules in Pope's Preface. That Pope respected them cannot be doubted, else he would not have spoken so well of Rymer, and in the critical notes added to his Homer we should not hear so much of Le Bossu's treatise on the Epic.(11) But Pope was a discreet man, who knew when to be silent. He regarded it as a misfortune that Shakespeare was not so circ.u.mstanced as to be able to write on the model of the ancients, but, unlike the pedant theorists, he refused to judge Shakespeare by the rules of a foreign drama. Much the same is to be said of Addison. His belief in the rules appears in his _Cato_. His over-rated criticism of _Paradise Lost_ is little more than a laboured application of the system of Le Bossu. But in the _Spectator_ he too urges that Shakespeare is not to be judged according to the rules. "Our critics do not seem sensible," he writes, "that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of the rules of art than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them. Our inimitable Shakespeare is a stumbling-block to the whole tribe of these rigid critics. Who would not rather read one of his plays where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic where there is not one of them violated?"(12) The rigid critics continued to find fault with the structure of Shakespeare's plays. In the articles in the _Adventurer_ on the _Tempest_ and _King Lear_, Joseph Warton repeats the standard objection to tragi-comedy and underplots. In the _Biographia Britannica_ we still find it stated that Shakespeare set himself to please the populace, and that the people "had no notion of the rules of writing, or the model of the Ancients." But one whose tastes were cla.s.sical, both by nature and by training, had been thinking out the matter for himself. It was only after long reflection, and with much hesitation, that Johnson had disavowed what had almost come to be considered the very substance of the cla.s.sical faith. In his _Irene_ he had bowed to the rules; he had, however, begun to suspect them by the time he wrote the _Rambler_, and in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare suspicion has become conviction.

His st.u.r.dy common sense and independence of judgment led him to antic.i.p.ate much of what has been supposed to be the discovery of the romantic school.

His Preface has received scant justice. There is no more convincing criticism of the neo-cla.s.sical doctrines.(13)

Henceforward we hear less about the rules. Johnson had performed a great service for that cla.s.s of critics whose deference to learned opinion kept them from saying fully what they felt. The lesser men had not been at their ease when they referred to Shakespeare. We see their difficulty in the Latin lectures of Joseph Trapp, the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford, as well as in the Grub Street _Essay upon English Tragedy_ (1747) by William Guthrie. They admire his genius, but they persist in regretting that his plays are not properly constructed. Little importance attaches to Mrs. Montagu's _Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare_ (1769).(14) It was only a well-meaning but shallow reply to Voltaire,(15) and a reply was unnecessary. Johnson had already vindicated the national pride in Shakespeare. That his views soon became the commonplaces of those critics who strike the average of current opinion, is shown by such a work as William Cooke's _Elements of Dramatic Criticism_ (1775). But traces of the school of Rymer are still to be found, and nowhere more strongly than in the anonymous _Cursory Remarks on Tragedy_ (1774). In this little volume of essays the dramatic rules are defended against the criticism of Johnson by a lame repet.i.tion of the arguments which Johnson had overthrown. Even Pope is said to have let his partiality get the better of his usual justice and candour when he claimed that Shakespeare was not to be judged by what were called the rules of Aristotle. There are laws, this belated critic urges, which bind each individual as a citizen of the world; and once again we read that the rules of the cla.s.sical drama are in accordance with human reason. This book is the last direct descendant of Rymer's _Short View_. The ancestral trait appears in the question whether Shakespeare was in general even a good tragic writer. But it is a degenerate descendant. If it has learned good manners, it is unoriginal and dull; and it is so negligible that it has apparently not been thought worth while to settle the question of its authors.h.i.+p.(16)

II.

The discussion on Shakespeare's att.i.tude to the dramatic rules was closely connected with the long controversy on the extent of his learning. The question naturally suggested itself how far his dramatic method was due to his ignorance of the cla.s.sics. Did he know the rules and ignore them, or did he write with no knowledge of the Greek and Roman models? Whichever view the critics adopted, one and all felt they were arguing for the honour of Shakespeare. If some would prove for his greater glory that parallel pa.s.sages were due to direct borrowing, others held it was more to his credit to have known nothing of the cla.s.sics and to have equalled or surpa.s.sed them by the mere force of una.s.sisted genius.

The controversy proper begins with Rowe's _Account of Shakespeare_. On this subject, as on others, Rowe expresses the tradition of the seventeenth century. His view is the same as Dryden's, and Dryden had accepted Jonson's statement that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek." Rowe believes that his acquaintance with Latin authors was such as he might have gained at school: he could remember tags of Horace or Mantuan, but was unable to read Plautus in the original. The plea that comparative ignorance of the cla.s.sics may not have been a disadvantage, as it perhaps prevented the sacrifice of fancy to correctness, prompted a reply by Gildon in his _Essay on the Stage_, where the argument is based partly on the belief that Shakespeare had read Ovid and Plautus and had thereby neither spoiled his fancy nor confined his genius. The question was probably at this time a common topic of discussion. Dennis's abler remarks were suggested, as he tells us, by conversation in which he found himself opposed to the prevalent opinion. He is more p.r.o.nounced in his views than Rowe had been. His main argument is that as Shakespeare is deficient in the "poetical art" he could not but have been ignorant of the cla.s.sics, for, had he known them, he could not have failed to profit by them. Dennis is stirred even to treat the question as one affecting the national honour. "He who allows," he says, "that Shakespeare had learning and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from his extraordinary merit and from the glory of Great Britain."

The prominence of the controversy forced Pope to refer to it in his Preface, but he had apparently little interest in it. Every statement he makes is carefully guarded: there are translations from Ovid, he says, among the poems which _pa.s.s for_ Shakespeare's; he will not pretend to say in what language Shakespeare read the Greek authors; Shakespeare _appears_ to have been conversant in Plautus. He is glad of the opportunity to reply to Dennis's criticism of _Coriola.n.u.s_ and _Julius Caesar_, but though he praises the truthful representation of the Roman spirit and manners, he discreetly refuses to say how Shakespeare came to know of them. As he had not thought out the matter for himself, he feared to tread where the lesser men rushed in. But though he records the evidence brought forward by those who believed in Shakespeare's knowledge of the Ancients, he does not fail to convey the impression that he belongs to the other party. And, indeed, in another pa.s.sage of the Preface he says with definiteness, inconsistent with his other statements, that Shakespeare was "without a.s.sistance or advice from the learned, as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among them, without that knowledge of the best models, the Ancients, to inspire him with an emulation of them."

During the fifty years between Pope's Preface and Johnson's, the controversy continued intermittently without either party gaining ground.

In the Preface to the supplementary volume to Pope's edition-which is a reprint of Gildon's supplementary volume to Rowe's-Sewell declared he found evident marks through all Shakespeare's writings of knowledge of the Latin tongue. Theobald, who was bound to go astray when he ventured beyond the collation of texts, was ready to believe that similarity of idea in Shakespeare and the cla.s.sics was due to direct borrowing. He had, however, the friendly advice of Warburton to make him beware of the secret satisfaction of pointing out a cla.s.sical original. In its earlier form his very unequal Preface had contained the acute observation that the texture of Shakespeare's phrases indicated better than his vocabulary the extent of his knowledge of Latin. The style was submitted as "the truest criterion to determine this long agitated question," and the conclusion was implied that Shakespeare could not have been familiar with the cla.s.sics. But this interesting pa.s.sage was omitted in the second edition, perhaps because it was inconsistent with a less decided utterance elsewhere in the Preface, but more probably because it had been supplied by Warburton. In his earlier days, before he had met Warburton, he had been emphatic. In the Preface to his version of _Richard II._ he had tried to do Shakespeare "some justice upon the points of his learning and acquaintance with the Ancients." He had said that _Timon of Athens_ and _Troilus and Cressida_ left it without dispute or exception that Shakespeare was no inconsiderable master of the Greek story; he dared be positive that the latter play was founded directly upon Homer; he held that Shakespeare must have known Aeschylus, Lucian, and Plutarch in the Greek; and he claimed that he could, "with the greatest ease imaginable,"

produce above five hundred pa.s.sages from the three Roman plays to prove Shakespeare's intimacy with the Latin cla.s.sics. When he came under the influence of Warburton he lost his a.s.surance. He was then "very cautious of declaring too positively" on either side of the question; but he was loath to give up his belief that Shakespeare knew the cla.s.sics at first hand. Warburton himself did not figure creditably in the controversy. He might ridicule the discoveries of other critics, but his vanity often allured him to displays of learning as absurd as theirs. No indecision troubled Upton or Zachary Grey. They saw in Shakespeare a man of profound reading, one who might well have worn out his eyes in poring over cla.s.sic tomes. They clutched at anything to show his deliberate imitation of the Ancients. There could be no better instance of the ingenious folly of this type of criticism than the pa.s.sage in the _Notes on Shakespeare_, where Grey argues from Gloucester's words in _Richard III._, "Go you before and I will follow you," that Shakespeare knew, and was indebted to, Terence's _Andria_. About the same time Peter Whalley, the editor of Ben Jonson, brought out his _Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare_ (1748), the first formal treatise devoted directly to the subject of controversy.

Therein it is claimed that Shakespeare knew Latin well enough to have acquired in it a taste and elegance of judgment, and was more indebted to the Ancients than was commonly imagined. On the whole, however, Whalley's att.i.tude was more reasonable than that of Upton or Grey, for he admitted that his list of parallel pa.s.sages might not settle the point at issue.

After such a display of misapplied learning it is refres.h.i.+ng to meet with the common sense of one who was a greater scholar than any of these pedants. Johnson has less difficulty in giving his opinion on the extent of Shakespeare's learning than in discovering the reasons of the controversy. The evidence of Shakespeare's contemporary, he says, ought to decide the question unless some testimony of equal force can be opposed, and such testimony he refuses to find in the collections of the Uptons and Greys. It is especially remarkable that Johnson, who is not considered to have been strong in research, should be the first to state that Shakespeare used North's translation of Plutarch. He is the first also to point out that there was an English translation of the play on which the _Comedy of Errors_ was founded,(17) and the first to show that it was not necessary to go back to the _Tale of Gamelyn_ for the story of _As you like it_. There is no evidence how he came by this knowledge. The casual and allusive manner in which he advances his information would seem to show that it was not of his own getting. He may have been indebted for it to the scholar who two years later put an end to the controversy. The edition of Shakespeare did not appear till October, 1765, and early in that year Johnson had spent his "joyous evening" at Cambridge with Richard Farmer.(18)

The _Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare_ is not an independent treatise like Whalley's _Enquiry_, but rather a detailed reply to the arguments of Upton and his fellows. Farmer had once been idle enough, he tells us himself, to collect parallel pa.s.sages, but he had been saved by his remarkable bibliographical knowledge. He found out that the literature of the age of Elizabeth was a better hunting ground than the cla.s.sics for Shakespearian commentators. Again and again he shows that pa.s.sages which had been urged as convincing proof of knowledge of Latin or Greek are either borrowed from contemporary translations or ill.u.s.trated by contemporary usage. In so far as the _Essay_ aims at showing the futility of the arguments advanced to prove Shakespeare's learning, it is convincing. The only criticism that can reasonably be pa.s.sed on it is that Farmer is apt to think he has proved his own case when he has merely destroyed the evidence of his opponents. His conclusion regarding Shakespeare's knowledge of French and Italian may be too extreme to be generally accepted now, and indeed it may not be logically deducible from his examination of the arguments of other critics; but on the whole the book is a remarkably able study. Though Farmer speaks expressly of acquitting "our great poet of all piratical depredations on the Ancients,"

his purpose has often been misunderstood, or at least misrepresented. He aimed at giving Shakespeare the greater commendation, but certain critics of the earlier half of the nineteenth century would have it that he had tried to prove, for his own glory, that Shakespeare was a very ignorant fellow. William Maginn in particular proclaimed the _Essay_ a "piece of pedantic impertinence not paralleled in literature." The early Variorum editions had acknowledged its value by reprinting it in its entirety, besides quoting from it liberally in the notes to the separate plays, and Maginn determined to do his best to rid them in future of this "superfluous swelling." So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after hitting out and about at the _Essay_ for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholars.h.i.+p. His bl.u.s.ter compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some pa.s.sages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity.

There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which was never done before; that is, you have completely finished a controversy beyond all further doubt."(20)

III.