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We have therefore no occasion to go with Mr. Garrick as far as the French of Brantome to illustrate this ceremony: a Gentleman who will be always allowed the first Commentator on Shakespeare, when he does not carry us beyond himself.

Mr. Upton, however, in the next place, produces a passage from Henry the sixth, whence he argues it to be very plain that our Author had not only read Cicero’s Offices, but even more critically than many of the Editors:

—-This Villain here,
Being Captain of a Pinnace, threatens more
Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian Pirate.

So the Wight, he observes with great exultation, is named by Cicero in the Editions of Shakespeare’s time, “Bargulus Illyrius latro”; tho’ the modern Editors have chosen to call him Bardylis:–“and thus I found it in two MSS.”–And thus he might have found it in two Translations, before Shakespeare was born. Robert Whytinton, 1533, calls him, “Bargulus a Pirate upon the see of Illiry”; and Nicholas Grimald, about twenty years afterward, “Bargulus the Illyrian Robber.”

But it had been easy to have checked Mr. Upton’s exultation, by observing that Bargulus does not appear in the Quarto.–Which also is the case with some fragments of Latin verses, in the different Parts of this doubtful performance.

It is scarcely worth mentioning that two or three more Latin passages, which are met with in our Author, are immediately transcribed from the Story or Chronicle before him. Thus in Henry the fifth, whose right to the kingdom of France is copiously demonstrated by the Archbishop:

—-There is no bar
To make against your Highness’ claim to France,
But this which they produce from Pharamond:
In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant;
No Woman shall succeed in Salike land:
Which Salike land the French unjustly gloze
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar.
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
That the land Salike lies in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elve, etc.

Archbishop Chichelie, says Holingshed, “did much inueie against the surmised and false fained law Salike, which the Frenchmen alledge euer against the kings of England in barre of their just title to the crowne of France. The very words of that supposed law are these, In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, that is to saie, Into the Salike land let not women succeed; which the French glossers expound to be the realm of France, and that this law was made by King Pharamond: whereas yet their owne authors affirme that the land Salike is in Germanie, between the rivers of Elbe and Sala,” etc. p. 545.

It hath lately been repeated from Mr. Guthrie’s Essay upon English Tragedy, that the Portrait of Macbeth’s Wife is copied from Buchanan, “whose spirit, as well as words, is translated into the Play of Shakespeare: and it had signified nothing to have pored only on Holingshed for Facts.”–“Animus etiam, per se ferox, prope quotidianis conviciis uxoris (quae omnium consiliorum ei erat conscia) stimulabatur.”–This is the whole that Buchanan says of the Lady ; and truly I see no more spirit in the Scotch than in the English Chronicler. “The wordes of the three weird Sisters also greatly encouraged him [to the Murder of Duncan], but specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, brenning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a Queene.” Edit. 1577. p. 244.