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than his fortune. The truth is, he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man; and yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."

We have here, then, direct evidence that this translation, in whole or in part, was known to a writer whose work was printed in 1600, but was written some time before; because, as already it has been shown, it had before that date fallen into many hands, and been transcribed and re-transcribed. And with this concurs another circumstance concerning this folio,-that, though it is quite true that it has the date 1603 in the title-page, the publication of it was contemplated several years before, the licence for the printing having been granted to Blount as early as 1599.*

Now, if Florio had made his translation so long before 1603, and had allowed it to be seen by Cornwallis, is it too much to ask the reader to concede that Shakespeare might have seen it likewise, especially as Florio was living at the time in the pay and patronage of the Earl of Southampton,t which must have brought Shakespeare into some degree of intimacy with him? Is it too much even to suppose that whatever knowledge Shakespeare possessed of French and Italian he obtained from Florio, the best and most popular teacher of the modern languages of his time?

I conceive, therefore, that the date of the printed Montaigne cannot be regarded as forming a great, much less an

Herbert's Ames, No. 1383.-We have a kind of proof that Florio was accustomed to use translations in the instruction he gave his pupils in the purchase by him of a French Plutarch and of an English Plutarch, in 1607, for the use of the Queen and her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth.

+ This fact in Florio's history, which has hitherto remained unnoticed, is distinctly stated by himself in the dedication of his Italian and English Dictionary, fol. 1598, where, addressing the Earl of Southampton, he says, "In truth I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all, yea of more than I know or can, to your bounteous Lordship, most noble, most virtuous, and most honourable Earl of Southampton, in whose pay and patronage I have lived some years, and to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live."

insurmountable, obstacle to the reception of the early date of this play.

I am told by a modern critic that I stand alone in thus contending for the early date; but the question with all wise and honourable men will be, not how many, or who, support or oppose, but whether the evidence demands the verdict. In the present case, the argument has had the full benefit of adverse criticism: but I may be excused if I do not abandon my position of the identity of The Tempest and Love Labours Won, at the call of a critic who reads so plain a passage, as if the writer meant to speak of Love Labours Lost and Love Labours Won as forming together the title of but one play; or desert the early date because, as Mr. Collier argues, having been performed at court in 1611, it could not have existed in 1598. This argument, to be good for anything, requires the intervention of the position that none but plays which were new were performed at court, which cannot be for a moment maintained. Mr. Cunningham has something to the same purpose, in which I can understand better the civility with which he means to treat me than the purport of his observation: "Hallowmas Night, 1611 (on which night he shews from the Accounts of the Master of the Revels that The Tempest was performed at court), was the 1st of November, 1611; and, as it was the custom of the age not to produce a play at court for his majesties royal disport and recreation' before it had been stamped with public approbation on a public stage, The Tempest' was in all likelihood first produced at the Globe in the summer of 1611. If this is correct, what becomes of Mr. Hunter's position that 'The Tempest' of 1611 was the 'Love's Labour Won,' mentioned as Shakespeare's by Meres in 1598."* I can no more yield to this kind of reasoning

* See Reasons for a new Edition of Shakespeare's Works, by J. Payne Col

than I can to declarations of opinion without any reason at all.

We must return to the writer in The Quarterly Review. This writer contends for the later date, 1613, and on these grounds: "We are informed by Mr. Vertue's manuscripts that this comedy was acted by Heming [Heminge] and the rest of the king's company before Prince Charles, the lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine Elector, in the beginning of the year 1613. The Prince Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth were married in February 1613; and is it not highly probable that this poem, which relates to the loves of a young prince and princess, and introduces a pageant of spirits to crown them with

"Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,

Long continuance and increasing,"

was expressly composed as a part of the splendid festivities of their royal nuptials?" Now The Tempest was certainly performed at court on November 1, 1611, fifteen months or more before the Prince Palatine's marriage.

From these recent attempts to controvert an argument cautiously and strongly built, and firmer than that by which the date of any other of the plays has been established,

lier, Esq. 8vo. 1842, pp. 44 and 49, and Extracts from the accounts of the Revels at Court, pp. 226 and 211. Mr. Collier indeed himself has distinctly shewn, p. 48, that some of the earlier plays of Shakespeare were performed at court in November 1604 or 1605, which is fatal to the argument that The Tempest having been played before the King on All Hallows Night, 1611, it could not have been written so early as 1598. Thus, The Merry Wives was performed at court in November 1604, while there is a printed copy of it of the year 1602 (Collier, Works, vol. i. p. 174). The Comedy of Errors was performed at court at the close of 1604, but it existed in 1598, as appears by Meres's list (Ib. vol. ii. p. 111). Much Ado was printed in 1603, yet performed at court in 1612 or 1613 (Ib. vol. ii. p. 184). The Merchant of Venice is in Meres's list in 1598, was printed in 1600, and yet performed at court in 1605 (Ib. vol. ii. p. 473). Othello was performed at court in 1636 (Ib. vol. vii. p. 630). There is, in fact, no show of probability in the argument raised on the court performances.

where we have not the benefit of that robust evidence which dates in title-pages and diaries supply, I turn to the consideration of the great argument by which the two most distinguished critics in this department, Mr. Malone and Mr. Chalmers, were led to assign this play to a late period of the author's life, and to place it in their chronological tables, Mr. Malone in 1611 and Mr. Chalmers in 1613.

Their argument may be briefly but sufficiently stated

thus:

The following passage occurs near the beginning of the play:

"In the deep nook, where once

Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew

From the still-vext Bermoothes."-Act i. Sc. 2;

Bermuda

from which it is evident that the mind of the poet was once at least, when engaged on this work, directed on Bermuda and the stormy character of the seas around it. was not only infamous for storms, like the island of Prospero, but was also, like it, supposed to lie under the influence of enchantment, being expressly called by the sailors in their profane way an isle of devils. A remarkable storm occurred in the Bermudean seas in the year 1609, in which a vessel called the Sea-Adventure was lost, having two distinguished Englishmen on board, Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates, who escaped, however, to the island, as the persons on board the vessel in The Tempest escaped to the island of that play. This event, according to the two critics, gave occasion to this play, in which the poet was greatly indebted to an account of the loss of the English vessel, written by an author of the name of Sil. Jourdan, whose work was published in 1610.*

* It is a small pamphlet in 4to, of which the title is as follows: A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Isle of Devils; by Sir Thomas Gates,

The facts are all admitted, but the inference of connection between them and the composition of this play is denied; and this, on account of the absence of any minute and singular circumstances common to the storm described by Jourdan and the storm in The Tempest, or common to the island of Bermuda and the island on which Shakespeare has placed the personages of his drama.

It will be admitted that a poet has storms at his command, and that he may at any time wreck a vessel if he choose to do so, without being stimulated by the occurrence of any particular storm, and without borrowing incidents from any actual storm. It will be admitted that he may invent such incidents and circumstances as are essential to convey a strong and vivid conception of such a scene to the minds of his readers. He may save or he may drown his hero as the exigencies of his story require, without in this necessarily alluding to any particular case of actual drowning or of safety in danger. It will also be admitted that in every seastorm, whether one of poetic invention or one of real life, there will be many circumstances in common; in short, that there is a strong family-likeness among storms at sea, and that there is perhaps no one storm of which we possess any minute and graphic description which does not contain some feature, and probably several, to be found in other descriptions, equally minute and graphic, of the same kind of event. Such degree of resemblance affords, therefore, no proof whatever that a later writer had been studying in a former; or, to apply more particularly to the present instance, can

We may

Sir George Somers, and Captain Newport, with divers others." remark the word 'discovery' in a sense now obsolete, but not uncommon in those times. The pamphlet may be found in Hackluyt, modern quarto edition, vol. v. p. 555-558, for it occupies only four pages. There is a larger and better account of the island and of the storm in which the Sea-Adventure was lost, by William Strachey, in Purchas, Pilgrims, part iv. p. 1734-1741.

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