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Shirley is spoken of with contempt in Mac Flecknoe ; but his Imagination is sometimes fine to an extraordinary degree. I recollect a passage in the fourth book of the Paradise Lost, which hath been suspected of Imitation, as a prettiness below the Genius of Milton: I mean, where Uriel glides backward and forward to Heaven on a Sunbeam. Dr. Newton informs us that this might possibly be hinted by a Picture of Annibal Caracci in the King of France’s Cabinet: but I am apt to believe that Milton had been struck with a Portrait in Shirley. Fernando, in the Comedy of the Brothers, 1652, describes Jacinta at Vespers :

Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
Which suddenly took birth, but overweigh’d
With it’s own swelling, drop’d upon her bosome;
Which, by reflexion of her light, appear’d
As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament:
After, her looks grew chearfull, and I saw
A smile shoot gracefull upward from her eyes,
As if they had gain’d a victory o’er grief,
And with it many beams twisted themselves,
Upon whose golden threads the Angels walk
To and again from Heaven.—-

You must not think me infected with the spirit of Lauder, if I give you another of Milton’s Imitations:

—-The Swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet.–B. 7. V. 438, etc.

“The ancient Poets,” says Mr. Richardson, “have not hit upon this beauty; so lavish as they have been in their descriptions of the Swan. Homer calls the Swan long-necked, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}; but how much more pittoresque, if he had arched this length of neck?”

For this beauty, however, Milton was beholden to Donne; whose name, I believe, at present is better known than his writings:

—-Like a Ship in her full trim,
A Swan, so white that you may unto him
Compare all whitenesse, but himselfe to none,
Glided along, and as he glided watch’d,
And with his arched neck this poore fish catch’d.– Progresse of the Soul, St. 24.

Those highly finished Landscapes, the Seasons, are indeed copied from Nature: but Thomson sometimes recollected the hand of his Master:

—-The stately-sailing Swan
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier Isle,
Protective of his young.—-

But to return, as we say on other occasions–Perhaps the Advocates for Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Latin language may be more successful. Mr. Gildon takes the Van. “It is plain that He was acquainted with the Fables of antiquity very well: that some of the Arrows of Cupid are pointed with Lead, and others with Gold, he found in Ovid; and what he speaks of Dido, in Virgil: nor do I know any translation of these Poets so ancient as Shakespeare’s time.” The passages on which these sagacious remarks are made occur in the Midsummer Night’s Dream ; and exhibit, we see, a clear proof of acquaintance with the Latin Classicks. But we are not answerable for Mr. Gildon’s ignorance; he might have been told of Caxton and Douglas, of Surrey and Stanyhurst, of Phaer and Twyne, of Fleming and Golding, of Turberville and Churchyard! but these Fables were easily known without the help of either the originals or the translations. The Fate of Dido had been sung very early by Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; Marloe had even already introduced her to the Stage: and Cupid’s arrows appear with their characteristick differences in Surrey, in Sidney, in Spenser, and every Sonnetteer of the time. Nay, their very names were exhibited long before in the Romaunt of the Rose : a work you may venture to look into, notwithstanding Master Prynne hath so positively assured us, on the word of John Gerson, that the Author is most certainly damned, if he did not care for a serious repentance.