yielding himself a prisoner to an English captain in the Low Countries, as you may read in an old collection of tales, called Wits, Fits, and Fancies,

Si fortuna me tormenta,

Il speranza me contenta.

And Sir Richard Hawkins, in his Voyage to the South Sea, 1593, throws out the same jingling distich on the loss of his pinnace.

"Master Page, sit; good Master Page, sit; Proface. What you want in meat, we'll have in drink," says Justice Shallow's fac totum, Davy, in the Second Part of Henry IV.

Proface, Sir Thomas Hanmer observes to be Italian, from profaccia, much good may it do you. Mr. Johnson rather thinks it a mistake for perforce. Sir Thomas however is right; yet it is no argument for his author's Italian. knowledge.

Old Heywood, the epigrammatist, addressed his readers long before,

Readers, reade this thus: for preface, proface,
Much good do it you, the poore repast here, &c.

Woorkes, Lond, 4to. 1562.

And Dekker in his play, If it be not good, the Deui. is in it, (which is certainly true, for it is full of devils,) makes Shackle-soule, in the character of Friar Rush, tempt his brethren with "choice of dishes,"

To which profuce; with blythe lookes sit yee.

Nor hath it escaped the quibbling manner of the Water

poet, in the title of a poem prefixed to his Praise of Hemp seed: "A Preamble, Preatrot, Preagallop, Prespace, or Preface; and Proface, my Masters, if your Stomacks serve."

But the editors are not contented without coining Italian. "Rivo, says the drunkard," is an expression of the madcap Prince of Wales; which Sir Thomas Hanmer corrects to Ribi, drink away, or again, as it should be rather translated. Dr. Warburton accedes to this; and Mr. Johnson hath admitted it into his text; but with an observation, that Rivo might possibly be the cant of English taverns. And so indeed it was: it occurs frequently in Marston. Take a quotation from his comedy of What you will, 1607;

Musicke, tobacco, sacke, and sleepe,

The tide of sorrow backward keep:

If thou art sad at others fate,

Rivo, drink deep, give care the mate.

In Love's Labour Lost, Boyet calls Don Armado,

Here too Sir Thomas is willing to palm Italian upon us. We should read, it seems, mammuccio, a mammet, or puppet: Ital. Mummuccia. But the allusion is to a fantastical character of the time." Popular applause," says Meres, "dooth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing, but vaine praise and glorie,our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and MONARCHO that liued about the court." P. 178.

as in

I fancy, you will be satisfied with one more instance. « Baccare, You are marvellous forward,” quoth Gremio to Petruchio in the Taming of a Shrew.

"But not so forward," says Mr. Theobald, “ as our editors are indolent. This is a stupid corruption of the press, that none of them have dived into. We must read Baccalare, as Mr. Warburton acutely observed to me, by which the Italians mean, Thou ignorant, presumptuous man."— Properly, indeed," adds Mr. Heath, "a graduated scholar, but ironically and sarcastically, a pretender to scholarship.”

This is admitted by the editors and critics of every denomination. Yet the word is neither wrong nor Italian: it was an old proverbial one, used frequently by John Heywood; who hath made, what he pleases to call, epigrams upon it.

Take two of them, such as they are:

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his sow:

Went that sow backe at that biddyng trowe you?

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his sow: se

Mortimers sow speakthi as good latin as he.

Howel takes this from Heywood, in his Old Sawes and Adages: and Philpot introduces it into the Proverbs collected by Camden.

We have but few observations concerning Shakespeare's Knowledge of the Spanish tongue. Dr. Grey indeed is willing to suppose, that the plot of Romeo and Juliet may be borrowed from a COMEDY of Lopes de Vega. But the Spaniard, who was certainly acquainted with

Bandello, hath not only changed the catastrophe, but the names of the characters. Neither Romeo nor Juliet; neither Montague nor Capulet, appears in this performance and how came they to the knowledge of Shakespeare?-Nothing is more certain, than that he chiefly followed the translation by Painter, from the French of Boisteau, and hence arise the deviations from Bandello's original Italian. It seems, however, from a passage in Ames's Typographical Antiquities, that Painter, was not the only translator of this popular story: and it is possible, therefore, that Shakespeare might have other

assistance.

In the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, the Tinker attempts to talk Spanish: and consequently the author himself was acquainted with it.

Paucas pallabris, let the world slide, sessa.

But this is a burlesque on Hieronymo; the piece of bombast, that I have mentioned to you before:

What new device have they devised, trow?

Pocas pallabras, &c.-

Mr. Whalley tells us, "the author of this piece hath the happiness to be at this time unknown, the remembrance of him having perished with himself:" Philips and others ascribe it to one William Smith: but I take this opportunity of informing him, that it was written by Thomas Kyd; if he will accept the authority of his contemporary, Heywood.

Mere nath been said concerning Shakespeare's acquaint

ance with the French language. In the play of Henry V. we have a whole scene in it, and in other places it occurs familiarly in the dialogue.

We may observe in general, that the early editions have not half the quantity; and every sentence, or rather every word, most ridiculously blundered. These, for several reasons, could not possibly be published by the author; and it is extremely probable, that the French ribaldry was at first inserted by a different hand, as the many additions most certainly were after he had left the stage.Indeed, every friend to his memory will not easily believe, that he was acquainted with the scene between Catharine and the old gentlewoman; or surely he would not have admitted such obscenity and nonsense.

Mr. Hawkins, in the Appendix to Mr. Johnson's edition, hath an ingenious observation to prove that Shakespeare, supposing the French to be his, had very little knowledge of the language.

"Est-il impossible d'eschapper la force de ton bras ?” says a Frenchman.—“ Brass, cur?" replies Pistol.

"Almost any one knows, that the French word bras is pronounced brau; and what resemblance of sound does this bear to brass?"

Mr. Johnson makes a doubt, whether the pronounciation of the French language may not be changed since Shakespeare's time;" if not," says he," it may be suspected that some other inan wrote the French scenes:" but this does not appear to be the case, at least in this termination, from the rules of the grammarians, or the practice of the poets. I am certain of the former from