FullReads

some one else. Edward Young, the author of Night Thoughts, in his Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759, p. 31.

168. Hales of Eton. See p. 8.

Fuller,– Worthies of England, 1662, “Warwickshire,” p. 126: “Indeed his Learning was very little, so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any Lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the Earth, so nature it self was all the art which was used upon him.” The concluding phrase of Farmer’s quotation is taken from an earlier portion of Fuller’s description: “William Shakespeare … in whom three eminent Poets may seem in some sort to be compounded, 1. Martial… 2. Ovid… 3. Plautus, who was an exact comedian, yet never any scholar, as our Shakespeare (if alive) would confess himself.”

untutored lines. Dedication of the Rape of Lucrece.

Mr. Glldon. “Hence perhaps the ill-starr’d rage between this critick and his elder brother, John Dennis, so pathetically lamented in the Dunciad. Whilst the former was persuaded that ‘the man who doubts of the learning of Shakespeare hath none of his own,’ the latter, above regarding the attack in his private capacity, declares with great patriotick vehemence that ‘he who allows Shakespeare had learning, and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory of Great Britain.’ Dennis was expelled his college for attempting to stab a man in the dark: Pope would have been glad of this anecdote” (Farmer). Farmer supplied the details in a letter to Isaac Reed dated Jan. 28, 1794: see the European Magazine, June, 1794, pp. 412-3.

Sewell, in the preface to the seventh volume of Pope’s Shakespear, 1725.

Pope. See p. 52.

Theobald. See p. 75.

Warburton, in his notes to Shakespeare, passim.

169. Upton, in his Critical Observations, 1748, pp. 3 and 5.

” Hath hard words,” etc. Hudibras, 1. i. 85-6.

trochaic dimeter, etc. See Upton, Critical Observations, p. 366, etc.

” it was a learned age,” etc. Id., p. 5. Cf. Hurd’s Marks of Imitation, 1757, p. 24.

Grey, in his Notes on Shakespeare, 1754, vol. i., p. vii.

Dodd, William (1729-1777), the forger, editor of the Beauties of Shakespeare, 1752.

Whalley. Farmer is here unfair to Whalley. The Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare shows plainly that Whalley preferred Shakespeare to Jonson. Further, his Enquiry was earlier than his edition of Jonson. In it Whalley expresses the hope “that some Gentleman of Learning would oblige the Public with a correct Edition” (p. 23).

170. Addison … Chevy Chase. See the Spectator, Nos. 70 and 74 (May, 1711).

Wagstaffe, William (1685-1725), ridiculed Addison’s papers on Chevy Chase in A Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb, 1711.

Marks of Imitation. Hurd’s Letter to Mr. Mason, on the Marks of Imitation was printed in 1757. It was added to his edition of Horace’s Epistles to the Pisos and Augustus.

as Mat. Prior says,– Alma, i. 241: “And save much Christian ink’s effusion.”