[Footnote 13: This difficulty extends also to France; for it must not be supposed that a literal translation can ever be a faithful one. Mrs. Montague has done enough to prove how wretchedly even Voltaire, in his rhymeless Alexandrines, has translated a few passages from Hamlet and the first act of Julius Cæsar.]
[Footnote 14: It begins with the words: A mind reflecting ages past, and is subscribed I.M.S.]
[Footnote 15: Lessing was the first to speak of Shakespeare in a becoming tone; but he said, unfortunately, a great deal too little of him, as in the time when he wrote the Dramaturgie this poet had not yet appeared on our stage. Since that time he has been more particularly noticed by Herder in the Blätter von deutscher Art und Kunst; Goethe, in Wilhelm Meister; and Tieck, in "Letters on Shakespeare" (Poetisches Journal, 1800), which break off, however, almost at the commencement.]
[Footnote 16: The English work with which foreigners of every country are perhaps best acquainted is Hume's History; and there we have a most unjustifiable account both of Shakespeare and his age. "Born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books." How could a man of Hume's acuteness suppose for a moment that a poet, whose characters display such an intimate acquaintance with life, who, as an actor and manager of a theatre, must have come in contact with all descriptions of individuals, had no instruction from the world? But this is not the worst; he goes even so far as to say, "a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold." This is nearly as offensive as Voltaire's "drunken savage."—TRANS.]
[Footnote 17: In my lectures on The Spirit of the Age.]
[Footnote 18: In one of his sonnets he says:
O, for my sake do you with fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
And in the following:
Your love and pity doth the impression fill, which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow.]
[Footnote 19: