Of standing Lakes, and of the Night, approche ye everych one.
I think it is unnecessary to pursue this any further; especially as more powerful arguments await us.
In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew, as an apology for his cruelty to Anthonio, rehearses many Sympathies and Antipathies for which no reason can be rendered,
Some love not a gaping Pig——
And others when a Bagpipe sings i' th' nose
Cannot contain their urine for affection.
This incident Dr. Warburton supposes to be taken from a passage in Scaliger's Exercitations against Cardan, [pg 191] “Narrabo tibi jocosam Sympathiam Reguli Vasconis Equitis: Is dum viveret, audito Phormingis sono, urinam illico facere cogebatur.” “And,” proceeds the Doctor, “to make this jocular story still more ridiculous, Shakespeare, I suppose, translated Phorminx by Bagpipes.”
Here we seem fairly caught;—for Scaliger's work was never, as the term goes, done into English. But luckily in an old translation from the French of Peter le Loier, entitled, A treatise of Specters, or straunge Sights, Visions and Apparitions appearing sensibly unto men, we have this identical Story from Scaliger: and what is still more, a marginal Note gives us in all probability the very fact alluded to, as well as the word of Shakespeare, “Another Gentleman of this quality liued of late in Deuon neere Excester, who could not endure the playing on a Bagpipe.”
We may just add, as some observation hath been made upon it, that Affection in the sense of Sympathy was formerly technical; and so used by Lord Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and many other Writers.
A single word in Queen Catherine's Character of Wolsey, in Henry the eighth, is brought by the Doctor as another argument for the learning of Shakespeare: