Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/471

 9 th S. V. JUNE 9, 1900.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

463

misconception by adding that I do no credit Shakespeare with any scholarly know ledge of Quintilian or of the Latin language He may have known Quintilian only ii extracts or at second hand. But in" tht seventeenth century Quintilian was still an accepted authority on style, and Shakespeare reflects, more fully than it is the fashion in some quarters to admit, the literary notiom of his time. * N. & Q.,' 9 th S. i. 504, furnishes an apposite instance. At that reference a contributor has succeeded in convincing himself, from the internal evidence of the plays, that Shakespeare never saw the sea The hyperbole of

The chiding billow seems to pelt the clouds is supposed to prove it; and a crowning specimen of the poet's ignorance is taken from the magnificent storm-scene in 'Pericles. The critic was evidently not aware that the offending lines are all more or less borrowed from the conventional storm-painting of the Latin poets, and passed current in Shake- speare's dav, when literature was strongly touched with Renaissance influences. Lucan's "Nubila tanguntur velis et terra carina (v. 642) is typical of such writing. Even if the critic did not know this, it is unfortunate that a few detached passages should blind him to the evidence of Shakespeare's love and knowledge of the sea evidence so over- whelming as to make his contention ludicrous.

PERCY SIMPSON.

In reply to MR. ALDERSON'S question I have no doubt that Shakespeare would have suffi- cient Latin to be able to read Cicero. At a time when education was "nothing if not classical," when all our greatest classical scholars lived and all our best translations were written, he would be certain to acquire sufficient Latin for this purpose at the grammar school at Stratford. At the same time, having carefully gone through, I believe, all the direct classical references in Shake- speare's plays, amounting to about two thousand, I have found them all, with one or two exceptions, to be traceable to English translations extant at the time. Whether there were any translations of Cicero and Quintilian I am not certain, but there were numerous translations of Homer, Ovid, and Virgil, besides three of Horace, two of Plutarch, one of Pliny, one of Herodotus, one of Lucian, and two of Heliodorus's
 * ^Ethiopics.' J. FOSTER PALMER.

Singer has the following note : "Steevens observes that Shakspeare has here transgressed a rule laid down by Tully, 'De Oratore': 'Nolo morte dici African! castratam esse

rempublicam.'...! must again remark that in former instances the phrase was only metaphorically used for diminishing or curtailing, and is not peculiar to Shakspeare, but a common form of expression in his time."

The term "deformed metaphor" is Cicero's own in the passage referred to : " deformis cogitatio similitudinis."

Other instances in Shakspeare are '1 Hen. IV ' III. i.; 'Love's Labour Lost,' II. i. ; and ' Rich. II./ II. i. Singer gives one from Bishop Hall, and Latham quotes one from Dryden. Since, then, the metaphor, however " ugly," is not uncommon, and is found at least four times in Shakspeare, may we not venture to suppose it a mere accident that the verbal notion has, in the passage under consideration, the same object as in the parallel passage of Cicero that we have here simply a remarkable coincidence ?

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A. Bath.

Singer, in his note to this passage, quotes an observation of Steevens which contains this extract from Cicero. If Shakspeare found the expression anywhere, he may have found it in the conversation of Ben Jonson, for he was much in his company. Or, if he did not know Ben Jonson at the time when he wrote the second part of ' Henry VI., J he may have learnt something of Cicero from another scholar, just as Byron got his know- ledge of Goethe's 'Faust' from Shelley. But I do not suppose that he borrowed the expres- sion from anybody. The thought seems to me a simple one, which might have occurred to more persons than one. Men may express the same thoughts without being indebted one to another for them. The evidence of Shakspeare's plays themselves that he had ' small Latin and less Greek " is much too strong to be overthrown by what is probably an accidental coincidence. E. YARDLEY.

[A translation of the ' Tusculan Disputations ' by Fohn Dolman was published in 1561. Translations oi the ' De Officiis ' appeared in 1534 and 1553. A ranslation of the treatise 'De Senectute' was rinted by Caxton in 1482. Other early renderings >f Cicero are in existence. No translation of Quin- ilian appears to have been extant in Shake- peare's time.]

FAHRENHEIT THERMOMETER (6 th S. iii. 507 ; v. 213 ; v. 79, 196 ; vi. 116 ; 9 th S. v. 229, 289, i22). The alteration proposed, that the pre- ent scale of Fahrenheit should be preserved or comparative purposes (the value of each "egree being unaltered), but that the readings hould be thirty-two points lower through- ut, has considerable advantage, as in the mended scale zero would coincide with the