Diique omnes nemorum, diique om

nes noctes adefte."

The tranflation of which, by Golding, is by no means literal, and Shakespeare hath clofely followed it;

"Ye ayres and winds; ye elves of hills, of brookes, of woodes alone, Of ftanding lakes, and of the night, approche ye everych one.

In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew, as an apology for his behaviour to Anthonio, rehearfes many fympathies and antipathies for which no reafon can be rendered. "Some love not a gaping pigAnd others, when a bagpipe fings i'th' nofe,'

Cannot contain their urine for affection."

This incident, Dr. Warburton fuppofes to be taken from a paffage in Scaliger's Exercitations againft Cardon. And, proceeds the Doctor, to make this jocular ftory ftill more ridiculous, Shakespeare, I fuppofe, 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 book, tranflated from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, a Treatife of Spectres, or ftrange Sights, we have this identical itory from Scaliger; and what is ftill more, a marginal note gives us in all probability the very fact alluded to, as well as the word of Shakespeare," Another gentleman of this quality liued of late in Deuon, neere Excefter, who could not endure the playing on a bagpipe."

A word in Queen Catherine's character of Wolfey, in Henry the eighth, is brought by the doctor

as another argument for the learn ing of Shakespeare. "He was a man Of an unbounded ftomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one that by fuggeftion

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 rain, pitiful.

His promifes were, as he then was, mighty;

But his performance, as he now is, nothing.

Of his own body he was ill, and

gave theclergyill example." critic, is here ufed with great The word fuggeftion, fays the propriety, and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue. And he pro

ceeds to fettle the sense of it from the late Roman writers and their gloffers: But Shakespeare's knowledge was from Holingfhed; he follows him verbatim.

"This cardinal was of a great ftomach, for he compted himfelf equal with princes, and by craftie fuggeftion got into his hands innumerable treafure: He forced little on fimonie, and was not pitiful, and ftood affectionate in his own opinion: In open prefence he would lie and feie untruth, and was double both in fpeech and meaning; He would promife much cious of his bodie, and gaue and performe little He was vithe clergie euil example." And it is one of the articles of his im

peachment

peachment in Dr. Fiddes's collections, that the faid Lord Cardinal got a bull for the fuppreffing certain houfes of religion, by his untrue fuggeftion to the pope."

A ftronger argument hath been brought from the plot of Hamlet. Dr. Grey and Mr. Whalley affure us, that for this Shakespeare muft have read Saxo-Grammaticus in the original, for no tranflation hath been made into any modern language. But the misfortune is that he did not take it from Saxo at all; a novel called the hiftorie of Hamblet was his original: a fragment of which, in black letter, I have seen in the hands of a very curious and intelligent gentleman,

Mr. Farmer takes notice of the fuppofition that the Comedy of Errors is founded on the Menæchmi, which is (fays he) notorious Nor is it lefs fo, that a tranflation of it by W. W. perhaps William Warner, the author of Albion's England, was extent in the time of Shakespeare*.

But the sheet-anchor holds faft : Shakespeare himself hath left fome tranflations from Ovid.

Shakespeare was not the author of thefe translations, fays Mr. Farmer, who proves them to have been written by Thomas Haywood. He proves likewife a book in profe, (in which are many quotations from the claffics) afcribed, to William Shakespeare, to have been written by William Stafford.

Mr. Farmer mentions many other inftances concerning the learning of Shakespeare, with refpect to the ancient languages, and makes feveral obfervations on

his fuppofed knowledge of the modern ones.

We fhall conclude with a curious circumftance relating to Shakespeare's acting the ghoft in his own Hamlet, in which he is faid to have failed.

Dr. Lodge, fays Mr. Farmer, who, as well as his quondam colleague Greene, was ever peftering the town with pamphlets, publifhed one in the year 1566, called "Wits Miferie, and the Worlds Madnaffe, difcovering the devils incarnate of this age." One of these devils is Hate-vertue, who, fays the doctor, "looks as pale as the vifard of the Ghoft, which cried fo miferably at the theatre, like an oifter-wife, Hamlet Revenge."

An effay on the expreffim of the paffions in painting, tranflated from the Italian of the celebrated Alga

rotti.

ANY have written, and

MA

among the reft, the famous Le Brun, on the various changes, that, according to various paffions, happen in the mufcles of the face, which is, as it were, the dumb tongue of the foul. They obferve, for example, that in fits of anger, the face reddens, the mufcles of the lips puff out, the eyes fparkle; and that on the contrary, in fits of melancholy, the eyes grow motionlefs and dead, the face pale, and the lips fink in. It may be of fervice to a painter to read these, and fuch other remarks; but it will be of infinitely more fervice to study them in nature itself, from

which

which they have been borrowed, and which exhibits them in that lively manner which neither tongue nor pen can exprefs.

But if a painter is to have immediate recourfe to nature in any thing, it is particularly in treating those very minute, and almoft imperceptible differences, by which, however, things very different from each other, are often expreffed. This is particularly the cafe with regard to the paffions of laughing and crying, as in thefe, however contrary, the muscles of the face operate nearly in the fame manner.

As the famous Pietro de Cortona was one day finishing the face of a crying child, in a reprefentation of the iron age, with which he was adorning the floor, called the hot bath, in the royal palace of Pitti, Ferdinand II. who happened to be looking over him for his amufement could not forbear exprefling his approbation, by crying out, Oh! how well that child cries! to whom the able artift-Has your majesty a mind to fee how eafy it is to make children laugh? behold, I'll prove it in an inftant; and taking up his pencil, by giving the contour of the mouth a concave turn downwards, inftead of the convex upwards, which it before had, and with little or no alteration in any other part of the face, he made the child, who a little before feemed ready to burft its heart with crying, appear in equal danger of bursting its fides with immoderate laughter; and then, by reftoring the altered features to their former pofition, he foon fet the child a crying again.

According to Leonardo da Vinci, the best matters that a painter can have recourfe to in this branch, are

thofe dumb men, who have found out the method of expreffing their fentiments by the motion of their hands, eyes, eye-brows, and, in fhort, every other part of the body, This advice, no doubt, is very good, but then fuch geftures must be imitated with great fobriety and moderation, left they fhoold appear too ftrong and exaggerated, and the piece fhould fhew nothing but pantomimes, when fpeaking figures alone are to be exhibited, and fo become theatrical and fe. cond-hand, or at leaft look like the copy of theatrical and fecondhand nature.

We are told ftrange things of the ancient painters of Greece, in regard to expreffion, efpecially of Ariftides, who, in a picture of his, reprefenting a woman wounded to death at a fiege, with a child crawling to her breaft, makes her afraid, left the child, when she was dead, fhould, for want of milk, fuck her blood. A Medea murdering her children, by Timomachus, was like. wife much cried up, as the ingenious artist contrived to exprefs at once in her countenance, both the fury that hurried her on to the commiffion of fo great a crime, and the tendernefs of a mother, that feemed to withhold her from it, Rubens attempted to exprefs fuch a double effect in the face of Mary of Medicis, ftill in pain from her laft labour, and at the fame time, full of joy at. the birth of a dau phin, And in the countenance of Sancta Polonia, painted by Tierpolo for St. Anthony's church at Padua, one may, I think, clearly read a mixture of pain from the wound given her by the executioner, and of pleafure from the profpect of paradife opened to her by it.

Few

Few, to fay the truth, are the examples of ftrong expreffion afforded by the Venetian, Flemish, or Lombard schools. Deprived of that great happiness, the happiness of being able to contemplate at leifure the works of the ancients, the pureft fources of perfection in point of defign, expreffion, and character, and having nothing but nature conftantly before their eyes, they made ftrength of colouring, blooming complexion, and the grand effects of the chiaro ofcuro, their principal ftudy; they aimed more at charming the fenfes, than at captivating the understanding. The Venetians, in particular, feem to have placed their whole glory in fetting off their pieces with all that rich variety of perfonages and drefs, which their capital is continually receiving, by means of its extenfive commerce, and which attracts fo much the eyes of all those who visit it. I doubt much if in all the pictures of Paul Veronefe, there is to be found a bold and judicious expreffion, or one of thofe attitudes, which, as Petrarch expreffes it, fpeak without words; unless perhaps, it be that remarkable one in his marriagefeaft at Cana in Galilee, and which, I don't remember to have feen taken notice of before. At one end of the table, and directly oppofite to the bridegroom, whofe eyes are fixed upon her, there appears a woman in red, holding up to him the fkirt of her garment, as much as to fay, I fuppofe, that the wine miraculoufly produced, was exactly of the colour with the ftuff on her back. And in fact it is red wine we fee in the cups and pitchers. But all this while the faces of the company betray not the least

fign of wonder at fo extraordinary a miracle. They all in a manner appear intent upon nothing but eating, drinking, and making merry. Such in general is the ftyle of the Venetian school. The Florentine, over which Michael Angelo prefided, above all things curious of defign, was moft minutely and fcrupulously exact in point of anatomy; on this the fet her heart, and took fingular pleafure in difplaying it ; not only elegance of form, and nobleness of invention, but likewife ftrength of expreffion, triumph in the Roman fchool, nurfed as it were among the works of the Greeks, and in the bofom of a city which had once been the feminary of learning and politenefs. Here it was, that Domenichino and Pouf. fin, both great mafters of expreffion, refined themselves, as appears more particularly by the St. Jerom of the one, and the death of Germanicus, or the flaughter of the innocents, by the other.

Here it was, that Raphael arofe, the fovereign mafter of his art. One would imagine that pictures, which are the books of the ignorant, and of the ignorant only, he had undertaken to make the inftructors even of the learned. One would imagine, that he intended in fome meafure, to justify Quintilian, who affirms, that painting has more power over us than all the arts of rhetoric. There is not indeed a fingle picture of Raphael, from the ftudy of which, thofe who are curious in the point of expreffion may not reap great benefit, particularly his martyrdom of St. Felicitas, his Magdalene in the houfe of the Pharifee,

his transfiguration, his Jofeph explaining to Pharoah his dream, a piece fo highly rated by Fouffin. His fchool of Athens, in the Vatican, is to all intents and purpofes, a fchool of expreffion. Among the many miracles of art, with which this piece abounds, I fhall fingle out that of the four boys attending on a mathematician, who ftooping to the ground, his compaffes in his hand, is giving them the demonstration of a theo rem; one of the boys, recollected within himself, keeps back, with all the appearance of profound attention to the reafoning of the mafmas

ter, another by the brifknefs of his attitude difcovers a great quick nefs of apprehenfion, while the third, who has already feized the conclufion, is endeavouring to beat it into the fourth, who, ftanding motionlefs, with open arms, a ftaring countenance, and an unfpeakable air of ftupidity in his looks, will never perhaps be able to make any thing of the matter; and it is probably from this very group, that Albani, who studied Raphael fo closely, drew the following precept, viz.

That it behoves a painter to exprefs more circumftances than one by every attitude, and fo to employ his figures, that by barely feeing what they are actually about, one may be able to guefs, both what they have been already doing, and are next going to do." This I know to be a difficult precept; but I know too, that it is only by a due obfervance of it, the

eye

and the mind can be made to hang in fufpenfe on a painted piece of canvafs. It is expreffion, that a painter, ambitious to foar in his profeffion, muft above

A letter from the Abbe Metaftafio on the mufical drama, addressed to the author of an eJay on the union of mufic and poetry.

SIR,

YOU are not mistaken; I read

your book with the greateft furprife. By this effay alone, we can form a judgment of the acutenefs of your wit, the folidity of your tafte, and the depth of your knowledge in the arts. There is no Italian, at least as far as I know, who has carried his views and reflections fo near to the first fources of that lively and delicate pleafure, which is produced from the prefent fyftem of our mufical drama, and which is ftill capable of farther improvement.

Your ingenious and particular analyfis of the measure and cadence of our airs; the dexterity by which you point out, in a manner intirely new, the neceflity of difplaying and fetting off the chief motive in all adventitious ornaments; the judicious comparifon you draw on that fubject, between the mufical art, and that of defign in painting, wherein the parts untouched by the pencil, fhould always be perceived amidst the drapery: Your remarks on the climax of gradual progreffions, by means of which, in paffing from the fim le to the compound recitative, we should imitate thofe changes that are pro

duced