Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/466

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. DEC. 7, 1001.

pleasant language, upon which the best judgments look with great respect ; yet it wants sinews, and passes as a silent water. The French are truly delicate, but too affected and effeminate. Spanish majestical, but terrible and boisterous. The Dutch manly, but very harsh. Now we, in borrowing from each of them, give the strength ot consonants to the Italian, the full sound of syllables to the French, the variety of termination with milder accents to the Spaniard, and dissolve with more facility the Dutch vowels ; like bees, gather- ing their perfections, leave their dross to them- selves: So, when substance combineth with delight, plenty with delicacy, beauty with majesty, and expedition with gravity, what can want to the per- fection of such a language ?

Omitte mirari beatse Fumum, et opes, strepitumque Romse. Admire not then the smoaky fume, The wealth and train of mighty Rome."

' Harleian Miscellany,' vol. v. p. 431.

What this inimitable description of a great city, in which Horace (' Carmina,' iii. 29) is at his best, has to do with the subject Vindex alone could tell us. No quotation could be, it would seem, more inapposite.

I will now give Carew's estimate of some of the authors who had up to his time adorned our literature :

"Adde hereunto, that whatsoever grace any other language carrieth in verse or Prose, in Tropes or Metaphors, in Ecchoes and Agnominations, they may all bee lively and exactly represented in ours : will you have Platoes veine? read Sir Thomas Smith, the lonicke ? Sir Thomas Moore. Ciceroes? Ascham, Varro? Chaucer, Demosthenes? Sir lohn Cheeke (who in his treatise to the Rebels hath com- prised all the figures of Rhetorick. Will you reade Virgil ? take the Earle of Surrey. Catullus ? Shake- spheare and Barlowes fragment, Ovid? Daniell, Lucan ? Spencer, Martial ? Sir lohn Davies and others : will you have all in all for Prose and verse? take the miracle of our age Sir Philip Sidney."

A word of explanation may be here allowed. The Varro mentioned is not " the most learned of the Romans," but the author of the ' Argo nautica,' of which there are only a few portions extant, bearing little resemblance, I should say, to Chaucer's work. The name Barlowe is an evident misprint for Marlowe, and the " fragment" is his unfinished poem of ' Hero and Leander,' which was afterwards completed by Chapman. With regard to the spelling of Shakespeare, there can be no doubt that the second A is superfluous and a printer's error, because we find the name given correctly on two other pages in the volume, 128 and 324. This is an interesting fact when we consider that the book was published nearly two years before the poet's death. Furthermore, I believe it to be what Camden himself thought the correct spelling, for in his chapter on 'Surnames' he write' " Broad-speare, Breake-speare, Shake-speare,

for the purpose of showing the reader what was their origin (p. 128).

To Carew's list of English writers I must add Camden's, though it has already appeared in these pages :

" These may suffice for some Poeticall descriptions of our auncient Poets ; if I would come to our time, what a world could I present to you out of Sir Philip Sidney, Edw.[m] Spencer, Samuel Daniel, Hugh Holland, Ben. lohnson, Thomas Campion, Mich. Dray ton, George Chapman, lohn Marston, William Shakespeare, and other most pregnant wits of these our times, whom succeeding ages may iustly ad- mire." P. 324.

There can be no doubt that Vindex is very much indebted to the writers just quoted, as will appear from the following extract :

" What variety doth any other nation brag of, that we have not almost with equal felicity made our own ? The Italian courtier, the French Salust, the Spanish Guzman, the Latin Naso, and the Greek Polybius ; who would read that match- less essay of Mr. Sandys, upon the yiCneids, and, would not think it writ so by the peerless Maro himself? How properly hath the renowned Lord Bacon taught us to speak the terms of art, in our language : We judged it impossible, till we saw it performed ; which difficulty when I see overcome, makes me despair of nothing. What matchless and incomparable pieces of eloquence hath this time of civil war afforded? Came there ever from a prince's pen such exact pieces as are his majesty's declarations? Were there ever speeches uttered in better language, or sweeter expressions, than those of the noble and learned Lord Digby, and some other worthy personages ? Did ever nation expose choicer, more honourable or eloquent dis- courses, than ours hath done in our sovereign's behalf, since these unhappy divisions ? There is no sort of verse either ancient, or modern, which we are not able to equal by imitation ; we have our English Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, Juvenal, Martial, and Catullus : in the Earl of Surry, Daniel, Johnson, Spencer, Don [Donne], Shakespear, and the glory oi; the rest, Sandys and Sydney/' ' Harl. Misc.,' vol. v. pp. 430-1.

In all this patchwork the only thing that is interesting is the reference to the time when it was done. But I need not give any more instances. The whole article is a plagiarism from beginning to end, with a single excep- tion, which I will mention anon.

There is only one quotation from an English author, whose name is not given :

" For one of our great wits (who understood most languages in Europe) affirms, 'That in uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the mind, which is the end of speech, we parallel any other tongue in the world ; and that our language is such, that foreigners, looking upon it now, may deservedly say,

Ipsa, suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri.

She now abounds in proper store,

And stands in need of us no more.'" Pp. 431-2.

But Vindex, loving a big word and a