Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/46

 NOTES AND QUERIES. GO* s. i. JAN. 9, 1904.

concerned." A careful examination of th three articles in the Fortnightly for April May, and July, 1903, will convince sceptic of the dramatist's classical knowledge tha Ben Jonson was a bit " too previous " wher he stated that Shakespeare (if he referred t the author of the plays) had " smalle Latin.' Opinions have changed, however, since th days of the critic Dennis, who wrote :

"He who allows Shakespeare had learning, am a learning with the ancients, ought to be lookec upon as a detractor from the glory of Grea Britain."

Very much on these lines run the remarks p a leader-writer in the Daily Netvs, who, in resenting Mr. Churton Collins's arguments stated : -

" It is right to say that in the article not a littl evidence is adduced to show that Shakespeare might conceivably have acquired the necessarj classical knowledge in the grammar school at Strat ford. There is nothing absolutely impossible in th< supposition that he did so, except the strong evi deuce that, as a matter of fact, he did not. Hac he done so, it is extremely hard to account for th opinion of his friends and contemporaries that h did not possess this knowledge."

It is evident that the theory of Dennis anc Dr. Farmer founded on the blunt assertion made to Drummond by Ben Jonson thai there is not a particle of classical know- ledge to be found in the plays, will die hard, if it ever dies. Of course the opinion oi Aubrey is worth nothing that "he under- stood Latin very well."

It seems ludicrous that MR. HAINES should condemn the dramatist's Latinity because in ' Troilus and Cressida ' the word '" Ariachne ' appears for "Arachne." But was that the fault of the writer of the plays? The Quartos and the Folio are full of typo- graphical errors, of which this is only an ordinary example, just as in 'The Merry Wives ' a clever compositor has puzzled com- mentators for all time with what the expres- sion " an-heires " is supposed to represent.

MR. HAINES also refers to " two or three instances of false Latin in ' Love's Labour 's Lost.' " I find in this play written a few years after Shakespeare left Stratford, the earliest of the dramatic series, and one so learned and scholarly in language and allu- sion that it is unfit for popular represen- tation the following Latin words : "minime," " veni, vidi, vici," "videlicet," "haud credo," " in via," " facere," " ostentare," " bis coctus," "terra," " perge," " pia mater,' " vir sapit, qui pauca loquitur," " mehercle," "Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra ruminat," "lege, domine," "caret," "pauca verba, ' " satis quod sufficit," " novi hominem

tanquam te," "ne intelligis domine, ! ' "laus deo, bone intelligo " (corrected by Holofernes to"bene"), "videsnequis venit," " Video et gaudeo," "pueritia," "exit." All this dog- Latin is not intended to be classical Latin the Latin of the writer but the Latin of the pedantic Holofernes, of whom the author makes such splendid game, and who speaks of " the ear of coslo " (for " ccelum ") and " imitari " (for " imitare," perhaps another printer's error). But may all this not be intentional, instead of accidental, bad Latinity ? We have in the same play speci- mens of excellent Italian and French, all of them grammatically accurate, as is also the case in the French dialogue of ' Henry V.'

In similar manner the dramatist's Latin has been called in question because in ' The Merchant of Venice ' one line reads " Stephano is my name " (why not, possibly, Stephano ?), and another, " My friend Stephano signify, I pray thee " ; but against this we can set the pronunciation of "Stephano" in 'The Tempest,' where the word occurs nine times five in prose and four in verse in every one of the latter the word being pronounced cor- rectly, " Stephano." To explain this dis- crepancy between the pronunciation in ' The Merchant of Venice' and that in 'The Tempest,' an ingenious critic has maintained that Ben Jonson had in the interval in- formed Shakespeare how the word should be properly pronounced ! Very likely ! Obliging " rare old Ben ! " GEORGE STRONACH.

BEYLE : STENDHAL (9 th S. xii. 127). Henri Beyle's father, Joseph Cherubin Beyle, assumed the title of nobility ("de"). Henri Beyle took the "de" about 1810, but abandoned it later. See 'Journal de Stendhal, 1801-14' (Charpentier), Appendix, p. 470.

J. C. MICHELL.

"A FLEA IN THE EAR" (9 th S. xii. 67, 138,

196). The following story, though not quite relevant to the query, may interest some of your readers :

" The snapping-bug is able to enter the human

ar and cause troubles. A man who had his ear

ntered and lived in by an insect thought himself

about to die, and lived in all sorts of extravagance,

wasting whatever belonged to his family. After

several years his fortunes were totally ruined, when

the insect came out, putting a stop to the disorder,

and being found to be this beetle." ' iTuen-kien-

ui-han,' 1703, torn, cdxlviii. fol. 4b.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Mount Nachi, Kii, Japan.

HISTORICAL RIME : RHYME (9 th S. xi. 209, 30 ; xii. 33, 491). The spelling rime appears o be the more correct The risk of its ccurring where it might be taken for the