Diique omnes nemorum, diique om

nes noctis 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 standing 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 Exercitatioas against Cardan. And, proceeds the Doctor, to make this jocular ftory fill more ridiculous, Shakefpeare, 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, cr trange Sights, we have this identical ftory from Scaliger; and what iş 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 néere Excefter, who could not endure the playing on a bagpipe."

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

as another argument for the learning 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 ruin,
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 the clergy ill example." The word fuggeftion, fays the critic, is here ufed with great pro priety, and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue. And he pro

ceeds to fettle the fenfe 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 himself equal with princes, and by craftie fuggeftion got into his hands innumerable treasure: He forced little on fimonie, and was not pitiful, and stood 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 and perform little: He was vis cious of his bodie, and gaue the clergie euil example." And it is one of the articles of his impeachment

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 must 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 Me

næchmi, which is (fays he) notorious Nor is it lefs fo, that a translation of it by W. W. perhaps William Warner, the author of Albion's England, was extant in the time of Shakespeare *.

But the fheet-anchor holds faft; Shakespeare himself hath left fome tranflations from Ovid.

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

his fuppofed knowledge of the mo dern ones.

We shall conclude with a cu rious circumftance relating to Shakespeare's acting the ghost 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 peering the town with pamphlets, pub

shed one in the year 1566, called "Wits Miferie, and the Worlds Madnaffe, difcovering the devils incarnate of this age." One of thefe 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 expreffion of the paffions in painting, tranflated from the Italian of the celebrated Algan

rotti.

M

ANY have written, and

among the rest, 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 mo、 tionless and dead, the face pale, and the lips fink in. It may be of fervice to a painter to read thefe, and fuch other remarks; but it will be of infinitely more fervice to ftudy them in nature itself, from

P4

which

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 expreffing his approbation, by crying out, oh! how well that child cries! to whom the able artift, Has your majefty 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 burst its heart with crying, appear in equal danger of burfing 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 gestures muit be imitated with great fobriety and moderation, left they fhould 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 fecond-hand, or at least 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 breast, makes her afraid, left the child, when he was dead, fhould for want of milk, fuck her blood. A Medea murdering her children by Timomachus, was likewife 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, fill in pain from her laft labour, and at the fame time, full of joy at the birth of a Dauphin. And in the countenance of Sanéta 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 purest fources of perfection in point of defign, expreffion, and character, and having nothing but nature constantly before their eyes, they made ftrength of colouring, blooming complexion, and the grand effects of the chiaro afcuro, 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 thofe who vifit 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 those 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 skirt of her garment, as much as to fay, I fuppofe, that the wine miraculously 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 flyle of the Venetian school. The Florentine, over which Michael Angelo prefided, above all things curious of defign, was most 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 Pouffin, both great mafters of expreffion, refined themselves, appears more particularly by the St. Jerom of the one, and the death of Germanicus, or the flughter of the innocents, by the other.

as

Here it was, that Raphael arose, 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 juftify 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 martyr. dom of St. Felicitas, his Magdalene in the house of the Pharifee,

his transfiguration, his Jofeph explaining to Pharaoh his dream, a piece fo highly rated by Pouffin. His fchool of Athens, in the Vatican, is to all intents and purpofes, a school of expreffion. Among the many miracles of art, with which this piece abounds, I shall 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 demonftration of a theorem; one of the boys, recollected within himself, keeps back, with all the appearance of profound attention to the reafoning of the master, another by the brifkness of his attitude discovers a greater quicknefs of apprehenfion, while the third, who has already feized the conclufion, is endeavouring to beat it into the fourth, who, standing motionlefs, with open arms, a ftar ing 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 ftudied 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 canvass. It is expreffion, that a painter, ambitious to foar in his profeffion, muft above

all things labour to perfect himfelf in. It is the last goal of his art, as Socrates proves to Parrhafius. It is in expreffion that dumb poetry confifts, and what the prince of our poets calls a visible language.

A letter from the Abbe Metaftafio on the mufic, drama, addreffed to the author of an effay on the union of mufic and poetry.

SIR,

YOU

are not mistaken; I read

Y your book with the greatest

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 pleafore, which is produced from the prefent fyftem of our musical drama, and which is ftill capable of farther improvement.

Your ingenious and particular analysis of the meafure and cadence of our airs; the dexterity by which you point out, in a manner intirely now, the neceflity of displaying and fetting off the chief motive in all adventitious ornaments; the judicious comparison you draw on that fubje&t, 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 fimple to the compound recitative, we should imitate thofe changes that are proy

duced,