Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853. Various
to his favourite sister, Miss Harriet Rose, written in the year before his marriage, at the age of twenty-two, and which, I believe, has never been printed. It may, perhaps, merit a corner of "N. & Q."
"Last week Mr. Cowper finished the Odyssey, and we drank an unreluctant bumper to its success. The labour of translation is now at an end, and the less arduous work of revision remains to be done, and then we shall see it published. I promise both you and myself much pleasure from its perusal. You will most probably find it at first less pleasing than Pope's versification, owing to the difference subsisting between blank verse and rhyme—a difference which is not sufficiently attended to, and whereby people are led into injudicious comparisons. You will find Mr. Pope more refined: Mr. Cowper more simple, grand, and majestic; and, indeed, insomuch as Mr. Pope is more refined than Mr. Cowper, he is more refined than his original, and in the same proportion departs from Homer himself. Pope's must universally be allowed to be a beautiful poem: Mr. Cowper's will be found a striking and a faithful portrait, and a pleasing picture to those who enjoy his style of colouring, which I am apprehensive is not so generally acceptable as the other master's. Pope possesses the gentle and amiable graces of a Guido: Cowper is endowed with the bold sublime genius of a Raphael. After having said so much upon their comparative merits, enough, I hope, to refute your second assertion which was, that women, in the opinion of men, have little to do with literature. I may inform you, that the Iliad is to be dedicated to Earl Cowper, and the Odyssey to the Dowager Lady Spencer but this information need not be extensively circulated."
50. Burton Street.
SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE
"As You Like It."—Believing that whatever illustrates, even to a trifling extent, the great dramatic poet of England will interest the readers of "N. & Q.," I solicit their attention to the resemblance between the two following passages:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
"Si rectè aspicias, vita hæc est fabula quædam.
Scena autem, mundus versatilis: histrio et actor
Quilibet est hominum—mortales nam propriè cuncti
Sunt personati, et falsâ sub imagine, vulgi
Præstringunt oculos: ita Diis, risumque jocumque,
Stultitiis, nugisque suis per sæcula præbent.
. . . . . . . .
"Jam mala quæ humanum patitur genus, adnumerabo.
Principiò postquam è latebris malè olentibus alvi
Eductus tandem est, materno sanguine fœdus,
Vagit, et auspicio lacrymarum nascitur infans.
. . . . . . . .
"Vix natus jam vincla subit, tenerosque coërcet
Fascia longa artus: præsagia dire futuri
Servitii.
. . . . . . . .
"Post ubi jam valido se poplite sustinet, et jam
Ritè loqui didicit, tunc servire incipit, atque
Jussa pati, sentitque minas ictusque magistri,
Sæpe patris matrisque manu fratrisque frequenter
Pulsatur: facient quid vitricus atque noverca?
Fit juvenis, crescunt vires: jam spernit habenas,
Occluditque aures monitis, furere incipit, ardens
Luxuriâ atque irâ: et temerarius omnia nullo
Consilio aggreditur, dictis melioribus obstat,
Deteriora fovens: non ulla pericula curat,
Dummodo id efficiat, suadet quod cœca libido.
. . . . . . . .
"Succedit gravior, melior, prudentior ætas,
Cumque ipsâ curæ adveniunt, durique labores;
Tune homo mille modis, studioque enititur omni
Rem facere, et nunquam sibi multa negotia desunt.
Nunc peregrè it, nunc ille domi, nunc rure laborat,
Ut sese, uxorem, natos, famulosque gubernet,
Ac servet, solus pro cunctis sollicitus, nec
Jucundis fruitur dapibus, nec nocte quietâ.
Ambitio hunc etiam impellens, ad publica mittit
Munia: dumque inhiat vano malè sanus honori,
Invidiæ atque odii patitur mala plurima: deinceps
Obrepit canis rugosa senecta capillis,
Secum multa trahens incommoda corporis atque
Mentis: nam vires abeunt, speciesque colorque,
Nec non deficiunt sensus: audire, videre
Languescunt, gustusque minor fit: denique semper
Aut hoc, aut illo morbo vexantur—inermi
Manduntur vix ore cibi, vix crura bacillo
Sustentata meant: animus quoque vulnera sentit.
Desipit, et longo torpet confectus ab ævo."
It would have only occupied your space needlessly, to have transcribed at length the celebrated description of the seven ages of human life from Shakspeare's As You Like It; but I would solicit the attention of your readers to the Latin verses, and then to the question, Whether either poet has borrowed from the other? and, should this be decided affirmatively, the farther question would arise, Which is the original?
Dublin.
[These lines look like a modern paraphrase of Shakspeare; and our Correspondent has not informed us from what book he has transcribed them.—Ed.]
Passage in "King John" and "Romeo and Juliet."—I am neither a commentator nor a reader of commentators on Shakspeare. When I meet with a difficulty, I get over it as well as I can, and think no more of the matter. Having, however, accidentally seen two passages of Shakspeare much ventilated in "N. & Q.," I venture to give my poor conjectures respecting them.
1. King John.—
"It lies as sightly on the back of him,
As great Alcides' shows upon an ass."
I consider shows to be the true reading; the reference being to the ancient mysteries, called also shows. The machinery required for the celebration of the mysteries was carried by asses. Hence the proverb: "Asinus portat mysteriæ." The connexion of Hercules—"great Alcides"—with the mysteries, may be learned from Aristophanes and many other ancient writers. And thus the meaning of the passage seems to be: The lion's skin, which once belonged to Richard of the Lion Heart, is as sightly on the back of Austria, as were the mysteries of Hercules upon an ass.
2. Romeo and Juliet.—
"That runaways eyes may wink."
Here I would retain the reading, and interpret runaways as signifying "persons going about on the watch." Perhaps runagates, according to modern usage, would come nearer to the proposed signification, but not to be quite up with it. Many words in Shakspeare have significations very remote from those which they now bear.