MISCELLANY.
THEOBALDUS SECUNDUS,
OR
SHAKSPEARE AS HE SHOULD BE.
NO. IV.
Hamlet Prince of Denmark, continued.
Latin and Greek are the only tongues in which departed spirits can be addressed, for this reason they are denominated the dead languages. The nonappearance of these supernatural beings in the present day, may be fairly ascribed to the decay of the learned languages. Cobbet, with all his volubility, has not a word to throw at a ghost. Johnson says:
When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes,
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspeare rose.
This is converting learning into a bricklayer, and would have come with a better grace from Ben Jonson than from Sam. But however that may be, under such an architect, ghosts would naturally be enrolled in the company. Dr. Farmer may say what he pleases, but I firmly believe Shakspeare had Latin enough to talk to his own ghosts; though I doubt whether I can express the same belief as to certain modern writers, who, by reviving ghosts to squeal and gibber on the London stages, have taken the same liberties as Shakspeare, without taking the same talents—"we have no cold beef sir," said the landlady at Glastonbury to a hungry traveller; "but we have excellent mustard!" All this however is foreign to the Prince of Denmark,
Horatio. ——I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day.
Doctor Fungus will have it, that cock should be clock, and ground his opinions upon the situation of St. Paul's clock. But this would spoil the poetry of the whole passage. What an accurate picture does the creative pencil of our great poet present to the mind's eye! The epithet lofty has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of agreeable surprise, informs us that the cock is the bird of Pallas—Pallas is the goddess of wisdom, and of course an early riser——
Early to bed, and early to rise, &c.