Remember whom ye are to cope withal,ey cut be Long kept in Britaine at our mother's cost, "A milksop," &c. Our mother," Mr. Theobald perceives to be wrong, and Henry was somewhere secreted on the continent: he reads therefore, and all the editors after him, "Long kept in Bretagne at his mother's cost." But give me leave to transcribe a few more lines from Holinshed, and you will find at once, that Shakspeare had been there before me :- "Ye see further, how a companie of traitors, theeves, outlaws and runnagates be aiders and partakers of his feat and enterprise. And to begin with the erle of Richmond captaine of this rebellion, he is a Welsh milksop-brought up by my moother's means and mine, like a captive in a close cage in the court of Francis Duke of Britaine." P. 756. Holinshed copies this verbatim from his brother chronicler Hall, edit. 1548, fol. 54; but his printer hath given us by accident the word moother instead of brother; as it is in the original, and ought to be in Shakspeare*. I hope, my good friend, you have by this time acquitted our great poet of all piratical depredations on the ancients, and are ready to receive my conclusion. He remembered perhaps enough of his school-boy learning to put the Hig, amongst other things, "quod exoletam Tragoediam de tragicâ abdicatione Regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datâ pecuniâ agi curasset." I cannot take my leave of Holinshed without clearing up a difficulty, which hath puzzled his biographers. Nicholson and other writers have supposed him a clergyman. Tanner goes further, and tells us, that he was educated at Cambridge, and actually took the degree of M. A. in 1544, Yet it appears by his will, printed by Hearne, that at the end of life he was only a steward or a servant in some capacity or other, to Thomas Burdett, Esq. of Bromcote, in Warwickshire.---These things Dr. Campbell could not reconcile. The truth is, we have no claim to the education of the Chronicler: the M. A. in 1544, was not Raphael, but one Ottiwell Holingshed, who was afterward named by the founder one of the first Fellows of Trinity College. hag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans; and might pick up in the writers of the time*, or the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian : but his studies were most demonstratively confined to nature and his own language. I In the course of this disquisition, you have often smiled at "all such reading, as was never read;" and possibly may have indulged it too far: but it is the reading necessary for a comment on Shakspeare. Those who apply solely to the ancients for this purpose, may with equal wisdom study the Talmud for an exposition of Tristram Shandy. Nothing but an intimate acquaintance with the writers of the time, who are frequently of no other value, can point out his allusions, and ascertain his phraseology. The reformers of his text are for ever equally positive, and equally wrong. The cant of the age, a provincial expression, an obscure proverb, an obsolete custom, a hint at a person or a fact no longer remembered, hath continually defeated the best of our guessers: You must not suppose me to speak at random, when I assure you, that from some forgotten book or other, I can demonstrate this to you in many hundred places: and I almost wish, that I had not been persuaded into a different employment. Though I have as much of the natale solum† about me, * Ascham in the Epistle prefixed to his Toxophilus, 1571, observes of them, that "Manye Englishe writers, usinge straunge wordes, as Lattine, Frenche, and Italian, do make all thinges darke and harde. Ones," says he, "I communed with a man which reasoned the Englishe tongue to be enriched and encreased thereby, sayinge: Who will not prayse that feast, where a man shall drincke at a dinner both wyne, ale, and beere? Truly (quoth I) they be al good, eury one taken by himself alone, but if you put Malmesye and sacke, redde wyne and white, ale and beere, and al in one pot, you shall make a drinke neither easye to be knowen, nor yet holsome for the bodye." + This alludes to an intended publication of the Antiquities of the Town of Leicester. The work was just begun at the press, when the writer was called to the principal tuition of a large college, and was obliged to decline the undertaking. The plates, however, and some of the materials, have been long ago put into the hands of a gentleman, who is every way qualified to make a proper use of them. as any man whatsoever; yet, I own, the primrose path is still more pleasing than the Fosse or the Watling-street an "Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale And when I am fairly rid of the dust of topographical antiquity, which hath continued much longer about me than I expected; you may very probably be troubled again with the ever fruitful subject of Shakspeare and his Commentators. C By a mistake, for which I must offer an apology to the reader, in giving out the copy to the printer, the following note by Mr. Steevens, and Dr. Farmer's two prefaces, were omitted in their former places, before his essay. They are here subjoined. BOSWELL. Though our commentaries on the following Plays have been enriched by numerous extracts from this celebrated Essay, the whole of it is here reprinted. I shall hazard no contradiction relative to the value of its contents, when I add— PREFACE ΤΟ THE SECOND EDITION, 1767. THE author of the following Essay was solicitous only for the honour of Shakspeare: he hath however, in his own capacity, little reason to complain of occasional criticks, or criticks by profession. The very few, who have been pleased to controvert any part of his doctrine, have favoured him with better manners, than arguments; and claim his thanks for a further opportunity of demonstrating the futility of theoretick reasoning against matter of fact. It is indeed strange, that any real friends of our immortal Poet should be still willing to force him into a situation, which is not tenable: treat him as a learned man, and what shall excuse the most gross violations of history, chronology, and geography? Οὐ πείσεις, ἐδ ̓ ἦν πείσης, is the motto of every polemick : like his brethren at the amphitheatre, he holds it a merit to die hard; and will not say, enough, though the battle be decided. "Were it shown, (says some one) that the old bard borrowed all his allusions from English books then published, our Essayist might have possibly established his system."-In good time!This had scarcely been attempted by Peter Burman himself, with the library of Shakspeare before him" Truly, (as Mr. Dogberry says,) for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all on this subject but where should I meet with a reader?-When the main pillars are taken away, the whole building falls in course: Nothing hath been, or can be, pointed out, which is not easily removed; or rather which was not virtually removed |
