FICIIS and the DE IRA one is sometimes moved to say, as
the essayist does[130] over Cicero, "I understand sufficiently what
death and voluptuousness are; let not a man busy himself to anatomise
them." For the swift and penetrating flash of Montaigne, which either
goes to the heart of a matter once for all or opens up a far vista of
feeling and speculation, leaving us newly related to our environment and
even to our experience, Seneca can but give us a conscientious
examination of the ground, foot by foot, with a policeman's lantern,
leaving us consciously footsore, eyesore, and ready for bed. Under no
stress of satisfaction from his best finds can we be moved to call him a
man of genius, which is just what we call Montaigne after a few pages.
It is the broad difference between industry and inspiration, between
fecundity and pregnancy, between Jonson and Shakspere. And, though a man
of genius is not necessarily dependent on other men of genius for
stimulus, we shall on scrutiny find reason to believe that in
Shakspere's case the nature of the stimulus counted for a great deal.

Even before that is made clear, however, there can be little hesitation
about dismissing the only other outstanding theory of a special
intellectual influence undergone by Shakspere--the theory of Dr. Benno
Tschischwitz, that he read and was impressed by the Italian writings of
Giordano Bruno. In this case, the bases of the hypothesis are of the
scantiest and the flimsiest. Bruno was in England from 1583 to 1586,
before Shakspere came to London. Among his patrons were Sidney and
Leicester, but neither Southampton nor Pembroke. In all his writings
only one passage can be cited which even faintly suggests a coincidence
with any in Shakspere; and in that the suggestion is faint indeed. In
Bruno's ill-famed comedy IL CANDELAJO, Octavio asks the pedant Manfurio,
"Che e la materia di vostri versi," and the pedant replies, "Litterae,
syllabae, dictio et oratio, partes propinquae et remotae," on which Octavio
again asks: "Io dico, quale e il suggetto et il proposito."[131] So far
as it goes this is something of a parallel to Polonius's question to
Hamlet as to what he reads, and Hamlet's answer, "Words, words." But the
scene is obviously a stock situation; and if there are any passages in
HAMLET which clearly belong to the pre-Shaksperean play, the fooling of
Hamlet with Polonius is one of them. And beyond this, Dr. Tschischwitz's
parallels are flatly unco