s _Saint
Patrick's Purgatory_, 1844, p. 18.

[92] _Paradise Lost_, B. II, 587-603.

[93] Edit. Firmin-Didot. i, 597-598.

[94] _Ibid._ p. 621.

[95] Act iv, sc. 5.

[96] iii, 3.

[97] B. v, cc. 8, 9, 10. _Cf._ vi, 2, 3.

[98] B. v, cc. 22-25.

[99] ii, 32.

[100] The arguments of Dr. Karl Elze, in his _Essays on
Shakspere_ (Eng. tr., p. 15), to show that the _Tempest_ was
written about 1604, seem to me to possess no weight
whatever. He goes so far as to assume that the speech of
Prospero in which Shakspere transmutes four lines of the
Earl of Stirling's _Darius_ must have been written
immediately after the publication of that work. The argument
is (1) that Shakspere must have seen _Darius_ when it came
out, and (2) that he would imitate the passage then or
never.

[101] Act v, sc. 3.

[102] i, 31.

[103] ii, 13.

[104] Act i, sc. 2.

[105] Act iv, sc. 3.

[106] i, 2.

[107] _Hippolytus_, 615 (607).

[108] See the Prologue to _Every Man in His Humour_, first
ed., preserved by Gifford.

[109] The 29th.

[110] See his _Characteristics of English Poets_, 2nd. ed.
p. 222.

[111] The most elaborate and energetic attempt to prove
Shakspere classically learned is that made in the _Critital
Observations on Shakspere_ (1746) of the Rev. John Upton, a
man of great erudition and much random acuteness (shown
particularly in bold attempts to excise interpolations from
the Gospels), but as devoid of the higher critical wisdom as
was Bentley, whom he congenially criticised. To a reader of
to-day, his arguments from Shakspere's diction and syntax
are peculiarly unconvincing.

[112] It may not be out of place here to say a word for
Farmer in passing, as against the strictures of M. Stapfer,
who, after recognising the general pertinence of his
remarks, proceeds to say (_Shakspere and Classical
Antiquity_, Eng. trans, p. 83) that Farmer "fell into the
egregious folly of speaking in a strain of impertinent
conceit: it is as if the little man for little he must
assuredly have been--was eaten up with vanity." This is in
its way as unjust as the abuse of Knight. M. Stapfer has
misunderstood Farmer's tone, which is one of banter against,
not Shakspere, but those critics who blunderingly ascribed
to him a wide and close knowledge of the classics. Towards
Shakspere, Farmer was admiringly appreciative--and