pearean works, only, from the heights of his superior plane, admits them very grudgingly to a rank beside the works of Waller) was obliged to confess as much. "This Shakespeare," says Mr. Pope, " must have been very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity. In 'Coriolanus' and 'Julius Cæsar,' not only the spirit, but the manner of the Romans is exactly drawn; and still a nicer distinction is shown between the manners of the Romans in the time of the former and of the latter. No one is more a master of the poetical story, or has more frequent allusions to the various parts of it. Mr. Waller (who has been celebrated for this last particular) has not shown more learning in this way than Shakespeare," But, if the New-Zealander be a philologist, he will scarcely need perusal of more than a Shakespearean page to arrive at this judgment. Wherever else the verdict of scholarship may err, the microscope of the philologist cannot err. Like the skill of the chirographical expert, it is infallible, because, just as the hand of a writer, however cramped, affected, or disguised, will unconsciously make its native character of curve or inclination, so the speech of a man will be molded by his familiarity, be it greater or less, with the studies, learning, tastes, and conceits of his own day, and by the models before him. He cannot unconsciously follow models that are unknown to him, or speak in a language he has never learned. Young Chatterton deceived the most profound scholars of his day, and his manuscripts stood every test but this; but under it they revealed the fact, so soon to receive the mournful 1Smith, p. 86. وو corroboration of history, that they were only the forgeries of a precocious boy. To just as moral a certainty are the handiwork of the Elohist and the Jehovist discernible in the Hebrew Scriptures, and just as absolutely incapable of an alternative explanation are the ear-marks of the Shakespearean text. Hallam, whose eyes were never opened to the truth, and who lived and died innocent of any anti-Shakespearean theory (though he sighed for a "Shakespeare of heaven," turning in disgust from the "Shakespeare of earth,' of whom only he could read in history), noticing the phases, unintelligible and improper except in the sense of their primitive roots, which occur so copiously in the plays, proceeds to say: "In the MidsummerNight's Dream' these are much less frequent than in his later dramas; but here we find several instances. Thus, Things base and vile, holding no quantity' (for value); rivers that have overborne their continents' (the continenti riva of Horace); compact of imagination; something of great constancy' (for consistency); 'sweet Pyramus translated there;' the law of Athens, which by no means we may extenuate,' etc. I have considerable doubts," continues Mr. Hallam," whether any of these expressions would be found in the contemporary prose of Elizabeth's reign, which was less overrun with pedantry than that of her successor. Could authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it is still not very likely that one who did not understand the'r proper meaning would have introduced them into poetry."1 When we remember the coarseness of 6 6 "To be told 1" Literature of Europe," Part II, ch. vi, sec. 81. that he played a trick to a brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died in a drunken frolic does not exactly inform social speech in those days, even in the highest walks of life-we happen to have very graphic accounts of Queen Elizabeth's sayings and retorts courteous (as, e. g., when she boxed Essex's ears and told him to go and be hanged)--it requires considerable credulity to assign this classic diction to a rustic apprentice from Stratford, who, at "about eighteen," begins his dramatic labors, fresh from the shambles, and with no hiatus for a college course between. 1 Add to this the patent fact that the antique allusions in the plays "have not regard to what we may call 'school classics,' but to authors seldom perused but by profound scholars "1 even to-day: and technical exploration, however far it proceeds beyond this in the Shakespearean text, can bring evidence only cumulative as to the result already obtained. But, if we pass from the technical structure to the material of the plays, we are confronted with the still more amazing discovery that, not only the lore of the past was at the service of their author, but that he had no less an access to secrets supposed to be locked in the very womb of Time, the discoveries of which, in the as yet distant future, were to immortalize their first sponsors. For example, Dr. Harvey does not announce-what is credited to him-his discovery of the circulation of us of the man who wrote "Lear." If there was a Shakespeare of earth, as I suspect, there was also one of heaven, and it is of him that we desire to know something." Id. Part II, ch. vi, sec. 35, note. 1Smith, p. 85. 2 Though not, perhaps, universally now-a-days. The late John Elliotson declared that the circulation through the lungs had certainly been taught seventy years previously by Servetus, who was burned at the stake in 1553. Dr. Robert Willis asserts, in the blood in the human system—until 1619 (his book was not published until 1628), three years after William Shakespeare's death. But why need Dr. Harvey have resorted to vivisection to make his "discovery"? He need only have taken down his "Shakespeare." Is there any thing in Dr. Harvey any more exactly definite than the following? "I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain, The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, Whereby they live." -Coriolanus, Act I, Scene 1. had baked thy blood, and made it heavy-thick (Which, else, runs tickling up and down the veins"). -King John, Act III, Scene 3. his "Life of Harvey," that the facts he used were familiarly known to most of his predecessors for a century previous. Izaak Walton states that Harvey got the idea of circulation from Walter Warner, the mathematician; and that eminent physician, John Hunter, remarks that Servetus first, and Realdus Columbus afterward, clearly announced the circulation of the blood through the lungs; and Cisalpinus, many years before Harvey, published, in three different works, all that was wanting in Servetus to make the circulation complete. Wotton says that Servetus was the first, as far as he could learn, who had a distinct idea of this matter. Even the Chinese were impressed with this truth some four thousand years before Europeans dreamed of it. Plato affirmed -"the heart being the knot of the veins, and the fountain from whence the blood arises and briskly circulates through all the members." This, however, rather adds to than lessens the strength of the argument drawn from finding the "discovery" in the plays. As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart." -Julius Cæsar, Act II, Scene 1. Harvey's discovery, however, is said to have been the theory of Galen, Paracelsus, and Hippocrates (who substituted the liver for the heart), and to have been held also by Rabelais. Neither Galen, Paracelsus, Hippocrates, nor Rabelais was a text-book at Stratford grammar-school during the two terms Mr. De Quincy placed William Shakespeare as a pupil there-but William has them at his fingers' ends. There are said to be no less than seventy-eight passages in the plays wherein this fact of the circulation of the blood is distinctly alluded to; and, as to Galen and Paracelsus, they intrude themselves unrestrictedly all through the plays, without the slightest pretext or excuse: "Parolles. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus. "Host of the Garter Inn. What says my Esculapius? my Galen?" -Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II., Scene 3. In King Henry VI. Part II., Act ii, Scene 2, the erudite Bardolph and Falstaff's classical page make a learned blunder about Althea, whom the page confounds with Hecuba. And so on. Are we to believe that this sometime butcher's boy and later stage manager has his head so brimming full of his old Greeks and philosophers that he can not for a moment miss their company, and makes his very panders and publiccans prate of them? Even if it were the commonest |