2"'d S. VII. April 30. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



355 



Pride, potnp, and circumstance of glorious war ! 

 And you mortal engines, whose rude throats 

 The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 

 Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone ! " 



Those only know the full pathos of these words 

 who have heard them uttered by Edmund Kean. 



Fortunately for the readers of "N. & Q." — 

 unluckily, perhaps, foi; my own theory — here my 

 Notes came to an end. I was interrupted by 

 graver duties before I had time to examine the 

 Historical Plays ; otherwise I have no doubt I 

 should have found in them confirmation "strong as 

 holy writ" of the views which I entertain. 



I felt assured, and I think have proved, that in 

 discoursing of military matters, Shakspeare was 

 no " bookish theorick ; " that " mere prattle, with- 

 out practice," was not "all his soldiership." I 

 felt this, and felt assured that time would prove 

 it so. 



That time to my mind came, when Mrs. Green 

 published, in August, 1857, her Calendar of State 

 Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of James /., 

 1603 — 1610, and in it a certificate, dated 23 Sept. 

 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot, under the 

 hands of Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Greville, 

 and Thomas Spencer, of the names and arms of 

 trained soldiers — trained militia we should now 

 call them — in the hundred of Barlichway in the 

 county of Warwick, which certificate contained 

 the name of William Shakspeare.* 



Barlichway, be it remembered, is the hundred 

 in which Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakspeare 

 was then resident, is situated, " and " (and here" I 

 quote the words of my friend Mr. Collier) " we 

 have intelligence regarding no other William Shak- 

 speare at that date, in that part of the kingdom." 



William J. Thoms. 



THE SAPIENS OF THE STOICS : MISTBANSLATIONS OF 

 MONTAIGNE. 



I find Montaigne saying (in book i. chap. ii. 

 De la Tristesse) : — 



" Les Italiens ont plus sortablement baptist de son nom 

 la malignite: car c'est une qualite tousiours nuisable, 

 tousiours folle ; et comme tousiours couarde et basse, les 

 Stoiciens en deffendent le sentiment a leur sage." 



Of course our Perigord philosopher alludes to 

 the ideal wise man of the later Stoics — the Omni- 

 potent Impossibility whom Horace so delighted to 

 make fun of — the 



" Dives qui sapiens est, 

 Et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et est rex." 



Sat. I. iii. 124-5. 



It is amusing to see how all Michel's translators, 

 multiplying this abstract creature into a troop of 

 Solomons in the flesh, have missed the point of 



* AthetKBttm (No. 1555.), August loth, 1857 ; Collier's 

 Shakspeare (ed. 1858), vol. i. p. 181. 



this passage. Florio, the raciest of them, gives it 

 thus : — 



" The Italians have more properly with its name en- 

 titled maliguitie : for it is a qualitie ever hurtful!, ever 

 sottish; and as ever base and coward, the Stoikes in- 

 hibit their Elders and Sages to be therewith tainted, or 

 have any feeling of it." 



More than seventy years later comes Cotton 

 with the following : — 



" The Italians, however, under the denomination of 

 Un Tristo, decypher a clandestine Nature, a dangerous 

 and ill-natur'd Man. And with good reason, it being a 

 Quality always hurtful, always idle and vain, and as 

 cowardly, mean and base, by the Stoickes expressly and 

 particularly forbidden their Sages." 



Hazlitt, in almost our own time, pretending to 

 give the last and finished English expression of 

 Montaigne's meaning, translates, if indeed he ever 

 saw the original : — 



" The Italians, however, more fitly apply the term 

 Qtristezza^ to indicate a clandestine nature, a dangerous 

 and bad nature. And with good reason, it being a 

 quality always hurtful, always idle and vain, and so cow- 

 ardly, mean, and base, that 'tis by the Stoics expressly 

 and particularly forbidden their Sages." 



Montaigne's learning, it would seem, did not sit 

 so loosely upon him as upon his translators. This 

 is only one of the false notes which they have 

 struck. Time and patience might expose a thou- 

 sand more. When the standard translation of 

 Montaigne into English shall appear — if we are 

 indeed ever to be blest with one — we shall expect 

 a recognition of John Florio's merits. Illustrious 

 Cotton certainly spoiled as well as despoiled him 

 in many, many instances — in more perhaps than 

 he improved upon him. Both Cotton and Hazlitt 

 have made overmuch ado about the difficulty of 

 rendering the limber old Gascon's talk, but neither 

 intimates how much of the translations going un- 

 der their names was first published in 1603. 



J. J. J. 



Gillrose Cottage, Thackeray Place, 

 Baltimore, Md. U. S. 



SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS S PORTRAITS OF 

 MRS. H6ARE. 



The large price of 2550 guineas lately given at 

 a sale at Messrs. Christie and Manson's, March 

 26, by the Marquis of Hertford, for Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds's painting of a Lady and Child, may 

 excite curiosity to know something of the parties 

 represented in it. It is a portrait of Susanna 

 Cecilia, the only daughter and heiress of Robert 

 Dingley, Esq., F.R. S., of Lemienby, vulgarly 

 Lamb- Abbey, in the parish of Bexley, Kent, who 

 died in 1781, and has a monument at Charlton in 

 Kent, and who was with Dr. Dodd one of the 

 founders of the Magdalen Hospital. She married 

 Richard Hoare, Esq., of Boreham, Essex (a de- 



