24. Shakespear ... Tragick Stage. Contrast Rymer's Short View, p. 156: “Shakespear's genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his element.” Cf. Dennis's later statement, p. 40.

25. the very Original of our English Tragical Harmony. Cf. Dryden, Epistle Dedicatory of the Rival Ladies, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 6, and Bysshe, Art of English Poetry, 1702, p. 36. See Johnson's criticism of this passage, Preface, p. 140.

Such verse we make, etc. Dennis makes these two lines illustrate themselves.

26. Jack-Pudding. See the Spectator, No. 47. The term was very common at this time for a “merry wag.” It had also the more [pg 309] special sense of “one attending on a mountebank,” as in Etherege's Comical Revenge, iii. 4.

Coriolanus. Contrast Dennis's opinion of Coriolanus in his letter to Steele of 26th March, 1719: “Mr. Dryden has more than once declared to me that there was something in this very tragedy of Coriolanus, as it was writ by Shakespear, that is truly great and truly Roman; and I more than once answered him that it had always been my own opinion.”

29. Poetical Justice. Dennis defended the doctrine of poetical justice in the first of the two additional letters published with the letters on Shakespeare. Addison had examined this “ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism” in the Spectator, No. 40 (April 16, 1711). Cf. Pope's account of Dennis's “deplorable frenzy” in the Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, x. 459).

30. Natura fieret. Horace, Ars poetica, 408.

a circular poet, i.e. a cyclic poet. This is the only example of this sense of circular in the New English Dictionary.

32. Hector speaking of Aristotle,—Troilis and Cressida, ii. 2. 166; Milo, id. ii. 3. 258; Alexander, Coriolanus v. 4. 23.

Plutarch. Though Dennis is right in his conjecture that Shakespeare used a translation, the absence of any allusion to North's Plutarch would show that he did not know of it. He is in error about Livy. Philemon Holland's translation had appeared in 1600.

33. Offenduntur enim, etc. Ars poetica, 248.

34. Caesar. Cf. the criticism of Julius Caesar in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725.

36. Haec igitur, etc. Cicero, Pro M. Marcello, ix.

38. Julius Caesar. Dennis alludes to the version of Julius Caesar by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, published in 1722. In the altered form a chorus is introduced between the acts, and the “play begins the day before Caesar's death, and ends within an hour after it.” Buckinghamshire wrote also the Tragedy of Marcus Brutus.

39. Dryden, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles (1680) ad fin.: “That of Œnone to Paris is in Mr. Cowley's way of imitation only. I was desired to say that the author, who is of the fair sex, understood not Latin. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be ashamed who do” (Ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 243). The author was Mrs. Behn.

Hudibras, i. 1, 661. But Hudibras has it slightly differently,—“Though out of languages in which,” etc.

[pg 310]

39. a Version of two Epistles of Ovid. The poems in the seventh volume of Rowe's edition of Shakespeare include Thomas Heywood's Amorous Epistle of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris. They were attributed to Shakespeare, till Farmer proved their authorship (p. 203). Cf. Gildon, Essay on the Stage, 1710, p. vi.

40. Scriptor, etc. Ars poetica, 120.

41. The Menechmi. Dennis's “vehement suspicion” is justified. See above, note on p. 9.

Ben Johnson, “small Latin and less Greek” (Verses to the Memory of Shakespeare).

Milton, L'Allegro, 133: “Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child.” The same misquotation occurs in Sewell's preface, 1725.

Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy: “Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation” (ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 80).

42. Colchus, etc. Ars poetica, 118.

Siquid tamen, etc. Id. 386. The form Maeci was restored about this time by Bentley.

43. Companies of Players. See Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 34.

we are told by Ben Johnson. See p. 22. But Heminge and Condell tell us so themselves in the preface to the Folio: “His mind and hand went together: and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”

Vos, O. Ars poetica, 291.

Poets lose half the Praise, etc. These lines are not by the Earl of Roscommon, but by Edmund Waller. They occur in Waller's prefatory verses to Roscommon's translation of Horace's Ars poetica.

Dennis's criticism of Jonson is apparently inspired by Rymer's remarks on Catiline (Short View, pp. 159-163). “In short,” says Rymer, “it is strange that Ben, who understood the turn of Comedy so well, and had found the success, should thus grope in the dark and jumble things together without head or tail, without rule or proportion, without any reason or design.”

44. Vir bonus, etc. Horace, Ars poetica, 445.

45. ad Populum Phalerae. Persius, iii. 30.

Milton. See Milton's prefatory note to Samson Agonistes.

46. Veneration for Shakespear. Cf. Dennis's letter to Steele, 26th March, 1719: “Ever since I was capable of reading Shakespear, I have always had, and have always expressed, that veneration for him which is justly his due; of which I believe no one can doubt [pg 311] who has read the Essay which I published some years ago upon his Genius and Writings.”

Italian Ballad. Cf. Dennis's Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manner, 1706.