Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare Part 31

_girls with spits._ _Coriola.n.u.s_, iv. 4. 5 (iv. 3. 5 in Johnson's own edition): "lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones, In puny battle slay me."

_A falcon tow'ring._ _Macbeth_, ii. 4. 12. The first edition read, "An eagle tow'ring," etc.

150. _small things make mean men proud._ _2 Henry VI._, iv. 1. 106.

154. _collectors of these rarities._ This pa.s.sage is said to have been aimed specially at Garrick. At least Garrick took offence at it. On 22nd January, 1766, Joseph Warton writes to his brother that "Garrick is intirely off from Johnson, and cannot, he says, forgive him his insinuating that he withheld his old editions, which always were open to him" (Wooll's _Biographical Memoirs of Joseph Warton_, 1806, p. 313). Cf.

the _London Magazine_, October, 1765, p. 538.

155. _Huetius._ Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), bishop of Avranches, author of _De Interpretation libri duo: quorum prior est de optimo genere interpretandi, alter de claris interpretibus_, 1661. The best known of his French works is the _Traite de l'origine de romans_. See _Huetiana_, 1722, and _Memoirs of Huet_, translated by John Aikin, 1810.

_four intervals in the play._ Cf. _Rambler_, No. 156.

157. _by railing at the stupidity_, etc. Johnson has Warburton in his mind here, though the description is applicable to others.

158. _Criticks, I saw_, etc. Pope, _Temple of Fame_, 37-40.

_the Bishop of Aleria._ Giovanni Antonio Andrea (Joannes Andreas), 1417-c.

1480, successively bishop of Accia and Aleria, librarian and secretary to Pope Sixtus IV., and editor of Herodotus, Livy, Lucan, Ovid, Quintilian, etc.

160. _Dryden_, in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_. In the _Life of Dryden_ Johnson refers to this pa.s.sage as a "perpetual model of encomiastic criticism," adding that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot "boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence."

_should want a commentary._ Contrast Rowe, Account, _ad init._ In the editions of 1773 and 1778 Johnson ended the preface with the following paragraph: "Of what has been performed in this revisal, an account is given in the following pages by Mr. Steevens, who might have spoken both of his own diligence and sagacity, in terms of greater self-approbation, without deviating from modesty or truth."

Richard Farmer.

_Joseph Cradock_ (1742-1826) had been a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He left the University without a degree, but in 1765 was granted the honorary degree of M.A. by the Chancellor, the Duke of Newcastle. His _Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs_ appeared in 1828.

162. "_Were it shewn_" _says some one._ See the review of Farmer's _Essay_ in the _Critical Review_ of January, 1767 (vol. xxiii., p. 50).

163. _Peter Burman_ (1668-1741), Professor at Utrecht and at Leyden; editor of Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Quintilian, and other Latin cla.s.sics.

"_Truly_," _as Mr. Dogberry says._ _Much Ado_, iii. 5. 22.

_Burgersdicius_,-Franco Burgersdijck (1590-1629), Dutch logician, Professor at Leyden. His _Inst.i.tutionum logicarum libri duo_ was for long a standard text-book. Cf. Goldsmith, _Life of Parnell, ad init._: "His progress through the college course of study was probably marked with but little splendour; his imagination might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius." See also the _Dunciad_, iv. 198.

_Locke._ This paragraph is a reply to an argument in the _Critical Review_ (xxiii., pp. 47, 48).

_Quotation from Lilly._ See p. 201.

_the Water-poet_, John Taylor (1580-1653); cf. Farmer's note, p. 212.

The quotation is from _Taylor's Motto_ (Spenser Society Reprint of Folio of 1630, p. 217):-

I was well entred (forty Winters since) As far as _possum_ in my _Accidence_; And reading but from _possum_ to _posset_, There I was mir'd, and could no further get.

In his _Thiefe_ he says "all my schollership is schullership" (_id._, p.

282).

164. _held horses at the door of the playhouse._ This anecdote was given in Theophilus Cibber's _Lives of the Poets_, 1753, i., p. 130. Johnson appended it, in his edition, to Rowe's _Account of Shakespeare_ (ed. 1765, p. clii), and it was printed in the same year in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (x.x.xv., p. 475). The story was told to Pope by Rowe, who got it from Betterton, who in turn had heard it from Davenant; but Rowe wisely doubted its authenticity and did not insert it in his _Account_ (see the Variorum edition of 1803, i., pp. 120-122).-Farmer makes fun of it here,-and uses it to vary the _Critical_ reviewer's description-"as naked with respect to all literary merit as he was when he first went under the ferula" (_Crit. Rev._ xxiii., p. 50).

_Dodsley_, Robert (1703-1764), publisher and author, declared himself "Untutored by the love of Greece or Rome" in his blank verse poem _Agriculture_, 1753, canto ii., line 319. His _Toy-Shop, a Dramatick Satire,_ was acted and printed in 1735. The quotation is not verbally accurate; see the _New British Theatre_, 1787, xvii., p. 48.

_A word of exceeding good command._ _2 Henry IV._, iii. 2. 84.

165. _learned Rubbish._ Cf. Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, line 613.

_Paths of Nature._ Cf. Prior, _Charity_, line 25.

_one of the first criticks of the age._ Dr. Johnson: see Introduction, p.

xxvii.

_a brother of the craft._ "Mr. Seward, in his Preface to _Beaumont and Fletcher_, 10 vols. 8vo., 1750" (Farmer). Cf. Theobald, Introduction to _Shakespeare Restored_: "Shakespeare's works have always appear'd to me like what he makes his Hamlet compare the world to, an _unweeded Garden grown to Seed_."

_contrary to the statute._ See Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 136, etc.

166. _Small Latin and less Greek._ "This pa.s.sage of Ben. Jonson, so often quoted, is given us in the admirable preface to the late edition, with a various reading, 'Small Latin and _no_ Greek'; which hath been held up to the publick as a modern sophistication: yet whether an error or not, it was adopted above a century ago by W. Towers, in a panegyrick on Cartwright. His eulogy, with more than fifty others, on this now forgotten poet, was prefixed to the edit. 1651" (Farmer). Johnson corrected the error in subsequent editions. See note, p. 135.

"_darling project_," etc. Kenrick, _Review of Dr. Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare_, 1765, p. 106: "Your darling project ... of invidiously representing him as a _varlet_, one of the illiterate vulgar."

166. _braying faction._ See _Don Quixote_, ii. 25 and 27. _those who accuse him_, etc. Dryden, _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_.

160. "Greatest commendation" should read "greater commendation."

_editor in form._ See Warburton, p. 97.

_sufficient to decide the controversy._ See Johnson, p. 135.

167. _whose memory he honoured._ Farmer has added to the quotation from Jonson's Poem "To the Memory of my Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare" a phrase from the pa.s.sage "De Shakespeare Nostrati" in Jonson's _Discoveries_: "I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any."

_"__Jealousy,__"__ cries Mr. Upton._ In his _Critical Observations_, 1748, p. 5.

_Drayton_, "In his Elegie on Poets and Poesie, p. 206. Fol., 1627"

(Farmer).

_Digges_, Leonard (1588-1635). "From his Poem 'upon Mister William Shakespeare,' intended to have been prefixed, with the other of his composition, to the folio of 1623: and afterward printed in several miscellaneous collections: particularly the spurious edition of Shakespeare's Poems, 1640. Some account of him may be met with in Wood's _Athenae_" (Farmer).

_Suckling._ _Fragmenta Aurea_, 1646, p. 35:

The sweat of learned _Johnson's_ brain And gentle _Shakespear's_ easier strain.