men who know not the technical words of our courts are content to give him credit for a mere scrivener's knowledge of law; Cockneys, who could not tell the stem from the stern of a ship, find him guilty of not knowing seamen's language; Steevens is inclined to think that he had no means of ascertaining the names of the flowers of the field; critics of Hampstead or Fleet Street," who never rowed in gondola," are quite certain that Italy was terra incognita to him; Johnson assures us that whenever he meddles with geography, he goes astray, the Doctor having, when he wrote the note, merely gone astray himself: in short, it would be easy to prove, from the assertions of Shakespeare's commentators, that there was nothing in the world-language, history, geography, law, theology, antiquity, art, science, down to domestic botany, in which his ignorance was not profound; but not more easy than to select from their own labors a most complete body of ignorance with respect to all the subjects on which they are most sarcastic and pungent, profound and dogmatic, at his expense. It is not worth the labor to make the collection; I have only to conclude by willingly admitting that the readers of Shakespeare have good reason to be obliged to the commentators in general for what they have done-that they have considerably improved the text, explained many a difficult passage, interpreted many an obscure word, and, by diligent reading and Arctus; scriptum video in antiquissimis libris præcipueque in Virgilio Carpensi," says Aldus Manutius, in his Orthographiæ Ratio, p. 77); and he accordingly passed Bishop Aldhelm's epigram (as he calls it, the bishop styles his compositions ænigmata) in the service of the Round Table. I do not know where he found it, but if it was in Aldhelm's Poetica Nonnula, edited by Delrio (Moguntiæ, 1601, p. 63), the preceding ænigma on the vertigo poli, which concludes with an allusion to the rapidity of the motion of the septem sidera, might have given him a hint. Whether Arcturus had any thing to do with Arthur, is a very different question indeed; but there is no question as to the utter ignorance of Latin manifested, and confessed, by this critic of Shakespeare's Latinity.-W. M. research, thrown much light over the plays. For this they deserve their due portion of praise; those among them, especially, who thought less of themselves than of Shakespeare. They by no means merit the sweeping censures of Tooke, Matthias, and others. I know, also, that commentators on works so voluminous, full of so many troublesome difficulties of all kinds, and requiring such an extended and diversified course of reading, must make mistakes, and therefore that their errors or rash guesses should be leniently judged; but no great leniency can be extended to those who, selecting the easiest part of the task for themselves-that of dipping into the most obvious classical writers—should, on the strength of very small learning, set themselves up as entitled to sneer at a supposed want of knowledge in Shakespeare, while their own criticisms and comments afford countless indications, "vocal to the intelligent," that they have themselves no great erudition to boast of. Apologising to your readers for so long detaining them, through your indulgence, from pleasanter matter, I have the honor to be, Faithfully yours, WILLIAM MAGINN. October 25 [St. Crispin's Day], 1839. * In the Diversions of Purley, Tooke says, "The ignorance and presumption of his commentators have shamefully disfigured Shakespeare's text. The first folio, notwithstanding some few palpable misprints, requires none of their alterations. Had they understood English as well as he did, they would not have quarrelled with his language." And again: "Rack is a very common word, most happily used, and ought not to be displaced because the commentators knew not its meaning. If such a rule were adopted, the commentators themselves would, most of them, become speechless."-Vol. ii. pp. 389-91, 4to. Yet he departs from the folio to read " one dowle that's in my plume," for the folio plumbe in the Tempest, p. 259; and in Anthony and Cleopatra, his commentary alters the rack dis limes into dis limbs, p. 392. Matthias's attack on the commentators in his Pursuits of Literature, was once very popular. It is alluded to even by Schlegel.-W. M. LAST NOTES UPON SHAKESPEARE. any THE Quarterly Review (No 130) contains an article upon Hunter's Essay on Shakespeare's Tempest, which very completely demolishes the theory of the reverend antiquary-annihilating it both in place and time.* It is indeed a hopeless quest to look for a physical site for Prospero's magic island, which must be somewhere in the same latitude as the Medamothi of Rabelais. But if we are to seek an actual island, Lampedusa, that chosen by Messrs. Hunter and Rodd, and apparently acquiesced in by Charles Knight, is quite out of the track. It is true that a tempest may whisk a vessel in direction away from her course; but two other vessels-those which brought Sycorax and Prospero-had formerly arrived at the island. The sailors brought Sycorax from Algiers: surely they did not take the trouble of coasting along a large tract of North Africa, and doubling Cape Bon, which they must have done to make Lampedusa, with so disagreeable a burthen, which they could be so little anxious to keep long on their hands! Nor can we imagine that Prospero's crazy boat-or butt, as Mr. Hunter will have it, judiciously following the first folio-could have floated right across the Mediterranean, dexterously avoiding Corsica, Sardinia, Africa, and Sicily, in his hasty and ill-furnished voyage. We have, in fact, four points to guide us. The island is in the Mediterranean, a short voyage from the Gulf of Genoa, where Prospero was embarked short, of course, for he was *This article in the Quarterly Review, referring to Mr. Hunter's remarks on the Tempest, appeared in March, 1840.-M. not provided for a long one. Also a short voyage from Algiers, for the sailors would get rid of Sycorax as fast as possible. And it must not be unreasonably far from the line from Tunis to Naples-the line on which the King's vessel was sailing when the tempest occurred. The points then lie thus: GENOA MEDITERRANIAN NAPLES ALCIERS TUNIS The island, then, must lie somewhere within the limits of this trapezium; and there are scores of islands there which, being volcanic, will supply all the phenomena recorded of Lampedusa by Cruziers, and others, quoted by Hunter. Many of them. were magic isles in mythology many a century before Shakespeare. Among these the King of Tempests himself kept his court, in the nimborum patria, among the loca fata furentibus austris. But, indeed, it is idle work to look for a locality for Prospero's island, any where but in the brain of Shakespeare. At all events, it is not Lampedusa. At the commencement of this article, the Quarterly Reviewer says: "If there was one play of Shakespeare's which we might reasonably have hoped to enjoy in peace, without molestation from the commentators, that play was The Tempest. It appeared to us that the author had told all that could be known, or that it was necessary to know; that the text was so generally free from corruption as to be sufficiently clear even to the most ordinary reader, and to afford very few oppor. tunities for the editor to display his cumbersome ingenuity in perplexing the difficulties which the ignorance of the printer's devil had originated; and that, in a work of so purely imaginative a character— of which scene, fable, persons, were all alike creations of the fancythere could not by any accident be discovered the slightest ground on which an historical discussion or an antiquarian argument could be raised. But we were deceived. We, the humble adorers of the genius of Shakespeare, who are content to forget ourselves in the enchanting visions of his glory, and to enrich our minds by gleaning something from the boundless treasures of his wisdom, can very little divine what inventions that parasitic race of writers are capable of, who, without talent to produce any original work of their own, are always on the look-out for an occasion of hitching on their lucubrations in the form of notes, or hints, or suggestions, or inquiries, or illustrations, or disquisitions to the productions of authors of eternal name. Without power of motion in themselves, they collect in bunches, and fasten themselves like barnacles to the bottom of the vessel, which is scudding along briskly before the gale; and they never seem to encounter any difficulty in making good their hold." This doctrine, if followed up, destroys the whole art of verbal criticism; and goes far to destroy commentary in general. If people are so enamored of a text as to think any remarks upon it superfluous, or impertinently intrusive, there is nothing easier for them than to read the text without commentary. But as to admire properly we should understand correctly, then, unless the reader has intuitive knowledge of all the difficulties of an author, he must condescend to consult those who have considered and endeavored to solve them. As for the errors of printers' devils, they are in general not very many, and seldom are they very important. The errors which deface the text of Shakespeare arise from another source-the utter carelessness or the gross ignorance of his player-editors. There is not a single page in their folio which does not contain a blunder: some contain a dozen. Now, to assert that there is something impertinent in removing these, is as reasonable as it would be to complain that the man who rubbed off dark spots and specks |