better effect, and he concludes his "Defence" with some excellent remarks on affectation in the choice and collocation of words, a vice from which he was more free than any of his contemporaries, simplicity and purity, in fact, being the leading features of his style.
The last critic of the era to which we are limited, is Edward Bolton, whose "Hypercritica; Or a Rule of Judgment for writing or reading our Historys," a small collection of tracts or essays, "occasioned," says Warton, "by a passage in Sir Henry Seville's Epistle prefixed to his edition of our old Latin historians, 1596,"[470:A] was supposed by Wood, in a note on the MS. preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, to have been written about 1610. But that this date is too early is evident from the work itself; for in the fourth essay, which is entitled "Prime Gardens for gathering English: according to the true gage or standard of the tongue about fifteen or sixteen years ago," King James's poetry is spoken of in the following manner:—"I dare not presume to speak of his Majesty's exercises in this heroick kind, because I see them all left out in that which Montague lord bishop of Winchester hath given us of his royal writings."[470:B] Now Bishop Montague's edition of James's Works was not published until 1616.
The principal writers in prose and poetry, anterior to 1600, are noticed in this fourth division of the Hypercritica, and the judgment passed upon them is, in general, correct and satisfactory, and does credit to the "sensible old English critic," as Warton emphatically terms him.[470:C]
It is remarkable that the Hypercritica should have been suffered to continue in its manuscript state until 1722, at which period it was printed by Anthony Hall at the end of Trivet's "Annalium Continuatio." Oxford, 8vo.
Bolton, whom Ritson calls "a profound scholar and eminent critic[470:D]," was certainly a man of considerable learning, and occupied
no small space in the public eye as an historian, philologer, and antiquary.
To this enumeration it may be necessary to add some notice of that industrious race of critics, termed Commentators; a species which, for the last half century, has been employed as laboriously on old English, as formerly were the German Literati on ancient classical, literature. Of this mode of illustration, which has lately thrown so much light on the manners and learning of our poet's age, two early and very ingenious specimens may be mentioned under the reign of Elizabeth and James. The first is the Commentary of E. K. on the Shepheards Calender of Spenser, in 1579; and the second, the learned Notes of Selden on the first eighteen Songs of the Polyolbion of Drayton, 1612; both productions of great merit, but especially the last, which exhibits a large portion of acumen and research, united to an equal share of discrimination and judgment.
Such are the chief critics on English literature who flourished during the life-time of Shakspeare. That some of them contributed very materially towards the improvement of polite literature, and especially of poetry, by stimulating the genius and guiding the taste of their contemporaries, must be readily granted, and more particularly may these benefits be attributed to the labours of Webbe, Puttenham, Sidney, and Meres. How far the manuscripts of Spenser and Bolton, at the commencement and termination of our critical era, assisted to enlighten the public mind, cannot now be ascertained; but as the circulation of works in this state is generally very confined, we cannot suppose, even admitting the industry and admiration of their favoured readers to have been strongly excited, that their effect could have been either widely or permanently felt.
It would be a subject of still greater curiosity, could we determine, with any approach towards precision, in what degree Shakspeare was indebted, for his progress in English literature, to the authors whom we have just enumerated, under the kindred branches of philology and criticism.
Of his assiduity as a reader of English books, whether original or translated, his works afford the most positive and abundant proofs; and that he was peculiarly attentive to the philology of his native language is to be learnt from the same source. We have already noticed his satirical allusion to Florio and Lilly in the character of Holofernes, and a similar stroke on the innovating pedantry of the times, will be found in his Much Ado about Nothing, which was probably directed against another equally bold attempt to alter the whole system of orthography. The experiment was made by Bullokar, of whose Brief Grammar a slight mention has been given, in a book entitled an Amendment of Orthographie for English Speech, 1580; in which the author proposes not only an entire change in the established mode of spelling, but a total revolution also in the practice of printing. To level a sarcasm at the head of this daring innovator may have been the aim of the poet, where he represents Benedict complaining of Claudio, that "he was wont to speak plain, and to the purpose, like an honest man, and a soldier; and now he is turned Orthographer; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes."[472:A]