FullReads

By two-headed Janus. Merchant of Venice, i. 1. 50.

Like a Janus with a double-face — Taylor’s Motto, Spenser Soc. Reprint, p. 206.

Sewel. Apparently a mistake for “Gildon,” whose Essay on the Stage is preceded immediately, in the edition of 1725, by Sewell’s preface. “His motto to Venus and Adonis is another proof,” says Gildon, p. iv.

Taylor … a whole Poem,– Taylor’s Motto, “Et habeo, et careo, et curo,” Spenser Soc. Reprint, pp. 204, etc.

sweet Swan of Thames. Pope, Dunciad, iii. 20:

Taylor, their better Charon, lends an oar
(Once Swan of Thames, tho’ now he sings no more).

Dodd. Beauties of Shakespeare, iii., p. 18 (ed. 1780).

185. Pastime of Pleasure. “Cap. i., 4to, 1555” (Farmer).

Pageants. “Amongst ‘the things which Mayster More wrote in his youth for his pastime’ prefixed to his Workes, 1557, Fol.” (Farmer).

a very liberal Writer. See Daniel Webb’s Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry, 1762, pp. 120, 121.

This passage, to “classical standard” (foot of p. 186), was added in the second edition.

See, what a grace. Hamlet, iii. 4. 55.

the words of a better Critick. Hurd, Marks of Imitation, 1757, p. 24.

186. Testament of Creseide. “Printed amongst the works of Chaucer, but really written by Robert Henderson, or Henryson, according to other authorities” (Farmer). It was never ascribed to Chaucer, not even in Thynne’s edition.

Fairy Queen. “It is observable that Hyperion is used by Spenser with the same error in quantity” (Farmer).

Upton. Critical Observations, pp. 230, 231. Much Ado, iii. 2. 11.

Theophilus Cibber (1703-1758), the actor, put his name on the title page of the Lives of the Poets (five vols., 1753), which was mainly the work of Robert Shiels (died 1753); see Johnson’s Life of Hammond, ad init., and Boswell, ed. Birkbeck Hill, iii. 29-31. For the reference to the Arcadia, see “Cibber’s” Lives, i. 83.

Ames, Joseph (1689-1759), author of Typographical Antiquities, 1749.

187. Lydgate. Farmer has a long note here on the versification of Lydgate and Chaucer. “Let me here,” he says, “make an observation for the benefit of the next editor of Chaucer. Mr. Urry, probably misled by his predecessor Speght, was determined, Procrustes-like, to force every line in the Canterbury Tales to the same standard; but a precise number of syllables was not the object of our old poets,” etc.

Hurd. This quotation, which Farmer added in the second edition, is from Hurd’s Notes to Horace’s Epistolae ad Pisones et Augustum, 1757, vol. i., p. 214. Cf. also his Discourse on Poetical Imitation, pp. 125 and 132, and the Marks of Imitation, p. 74. The passage in which the “one imitation is fastened on our Poet” occurs in the Marks of Imitation, pp. 19, 20. Cf. note on p. 170.

188. Upton. Critical Observations, p. 217.

Whalley. Enquiry, pp. 55, 56.

Measure for Measure, iii. 1. 118.

Platonick Hell of Virgil. Farmer quotes in a note Aeneid, vi. 740-742.