Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/99

9 th s. XIL AUG. 1,1903.] quotation, which might be known to people who had little knowledge of Latin. There are quotations less hackneyed than this to be found in the 'Second Part of Henry VI.,' a play which was not wholly written by Shakspeare. There are no signs of classical learning in his great plays ; these are only found in the doubtful plays. Anybody might have supplied the motto to 'Venus and Adonis,' but there is not the slightest sign of real classical learning in the poem itself. References to Titan and Tantalus do not argue deep learning. Shakspeare is supposed to have had learning because Greek and Latin authors have expressed ideas similar to his own. If he got those ideas by reading their works, how is it that his knowledge of Greek history and mythology is so limited ? Not sufficient attention is given to the evidence of want of learning that is to be found in his plays and other poems. In the works which undoubtedly are altogether his there is not a single passage which argues real classical learning. I am sure that he never read Greek. He has one passage very like what Eteocles says in the 'Phœcnissæ,' and another like what is said in 'Œdipus Tyrannus'; but Eteocles, Polynices, and Antigone were unknown to him. He knew Agamemnon, but not Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electro, and Iphigenia. He has shown clearly in 'Troilus and Cressida' that he did not know about Briseis, and was ignorant of the real cause of quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. Patroclus says to Achilles:

A poet who was acquainted with the 'Iliad' would have known this was not the reason why Achilles kept himself in retirement.

MR. STRONACH has mentioned Bacon's mistakes concerning Chilon and others. I feel sure that Shakspeare knew nothing of the subjects about which Bacon makes mistakes. Bacon's memory sometimes failed him, and he evidently was not in the habit of verifying his references; but his learning was great, and that of Shakspeare was small.

E. YARDLEY.

It may be true, as MR. STRONACH says, that the territory of Bohemia once extended to the sea, and that it was, therefore, at one time a maritime country. I do not think that this fact, however, was known to Shakespeare. It is certain that Ben Jonson was unaware of it, or he would not have complained to Drummond of Hawthornden that Shakespeare in one of his plays brought in a number of men shipwrecked on the coast of Bohemia, " where is no sea near, by one hundred miles." The responsibility really rests with Robert Greene, whose romance of 'Dorastus and Fawnia,' first published in 1588 as 'Pandosto ; or, the Triumph of Time,' served Shakespeare for the plot of his ' Winter's Tale.' In the story, as in the play, Bohemia is treated as a country bordering on the sea ; so that the poet, in adapting the story for the stage, merely copied Greene.

E. F. BATES.

Pace MR. STRONACH, Shakespeare and Bacon made no blunder about Aristotle's view of youth and ethics. It is true that Aristotle's words are, but they occur ('Nic. Eth.,' I. iii. 5) shortly after his description of ethics as (I. ii. 9). He was thus referring especially to this "kind of politics." The identification of ethics with politics is, as Sir A. Grant has pointed out, to be found also in Plato's ' Euthydemus.'

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

BYRONIANA (9 th S. xi. 444, 492 ; xii. 18, 52). There is no conceivable excuse for the blunder into which I have fallen by trusting to a too treacherous memory. I must humbly apologize to your correspondents, and to readers of 'N. & Q.' generally, for stating that Lord Byron had not visited Ferrara previous to June, 1819. As MR. ALDRICH points out at the last reference, Byron visited Ferrara in April, 1817. The result of that visit, of "one day only," was ' The Lament of Tasso.' My sole excuse for having questioned your correspondent's accuracy lies in the fact that Byron certainly did not visit Ferrara in 1818. Count Stephen Szechenyi writes in his 'Journal' under date July, 1818 : "Lord Byron has been here lately" &c. Now, as I well knew that Byron never left Venice or its neighbourhood during the whole of 1818, I foolishly jumped to the conclusion that "some one had blundered." As a matter of fact it was I who blundered. Byron visited Ferrara just one year and two months previous to the date given in Count Széchenyi's 'Journal.' If this impertinence on my part be forgiven, I promise that I will never again presume to take a mote out of my neighbour's eye while I have a beam in mine own.

RICHARD EDGCUMBE.

Edgbarrow, Crowthorne, Berks.

THE HAPSBURGS AS EMPERORS OF GERMANY (9 th S. xii. 47). Ramæse (?Romæ)...Ladomeriæ, i.e., Lodpmeriæ (kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria=the principalities of Halics and