2nd S. VI. 135., July 31. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



95 



I ventured to express in the paper alluded to (2°'^ 

 S. V. 449.) are in accordance with those of the 

 Eev. George Gilfillan. Until I read your cor- 

 respondent's letter, I was not aware that Mr. 

 Gilfillan had ever written a line upon the subject. 

 Had I known that I had so powerful an ally, it is 

 almost superfluous for me to say that I would 

 have framed my views with more confidence, 

 and that I would have been only too glad to 

 strengthen my argument by the authority of one 

 whose opinions on any literary question ai-e en- 

 titled to so much respect. As my opinion was 

 formed quite independently, and in complete 

 ignorance of Mr. Gilfillan's ; as I find a similar 

 opinion entertained by others whose literary dis- 

 tinction Mr. Gilfillan has himself recognised, I 

 think there must be more in it than your cor- 

 respondent can at present persuade himself to 

 believe. As the passages given in my letter were 

 taken almost at random, it is satisfactory that a 

 resemblance has been established in one instance 

 at least, according to the unwilling testimony of 

 A. A. W. himself. 



I do not mean to follow up this question any 

 farther. My wish, as expressed in my letter, 

 was to awaken a stronger interest in the works 

 of the elder poet than I fear exists, by showing 

 that he was not deficient in some of the charac- 

 teristics which have rendered the poetry of the 

 younger so attractive. It was by no means my 

 intention to detract from the merits of the latter ; 

 for I believe that after he freed himself from the 

 imitation of Thalaba-metres, and from the puerili- 

 ties and crudities of thought and style recorded 

 in Mr. Hogg's two bulky volumes, no more original 

 poet than Shelley is to be found in English liter- 

 ature. 



On the other matters referred to by A. A. W., 

 I may be permitted to add a word. The correc- 

 tion of the text suggested by me your corre- 

 spondent seems to think was superfluous, as the 

 error appears to him to be an " obvious misprint." 

 He forgets that the volume contains tivo versions 

 of " The Weeper" in which the error alluded to 

 (if it he an error), is found, and that the same 

 "obvious misprint" occurs in bolh, — a circum- 

 stance which I think can have no precedent in 

 any book printed and edited with similar ele- 

 gance and care. He forgets also that the " ob- 

 vious misprint " was deliberately adopted as the 

 true reading by one at least of the previous edi- 

 tors of Crashaw, Chalmers ; froui which piece of 

 information supplied by himself I am now dis- 

 posed to believe that the " obvious misprint" is 

 no misprint at all, but that it is the reading of 

 Chalmers adopted in preference by Mr. Tdkn- 

 BULL as the correct reading, which perhaps it 

 may be. 



Your correspondent refers to various editions 

 of Crashaw, which I regret I have no oppor- 



tunity of examining. Living by the sea-side 

 away from libraries, I had no access to them 

 when I wrote, nor have I now. My remarks were 

 based solely upon the very full information sup- 

 plied by Mr. TuR^BULL in his edition, — an edi- 

 tion which I felt, and still feel, to be entirely 

 satisfactory. 



Your correspondent, in reference to a remark 

 in my letter that Shakspeare himself was called 

 by one of his contemporaries " a daw decked out 

 in our feathers," states that this is " new to him." 

 I thought that every one tolerably acquainted 

 with the literature of Shakspeare's time, was 

 familiar with the remarkable passage in the ad- 

 monitory Address appended to Robert Greene's 

 Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of 

 Repentance, which was printed shortly after 

 Greene's death in September, 1592. It was from 

 this tract that the line given in my letter was 

 quoted by me from memory. The Irish Sea and 

 a good deal of English soil lying between me and 

 the British Museum, I cannot refer A. A. W. to 

 the original edition of Greene's Groats Worth of 

 Wit. I can only quote from books in my own 

 possession, namely, works so easily accessible as 

 Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, and 

 BeWs Annotated Edition of the English Poets. 

 Here is the passage as given in the first. After 

 alluding to Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, Greene 

 thus continues : — 



" For there is an upstart crow beautified with our 

 feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's 

 hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank 

 verse as the best of you ; and beiug au absolute Johannes 

 Fac-totuni, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in 

 a country." 



" The punning allusion to Shakspeare," says the writer 

 in Chambers, " is palpable : the expression 'tiger's heart,' 

 &c. are a parody on the line in Henry VI., part third, — 



" ' tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.' 



'= Ci/clop. of Lit. i. p. 1G9." 



Mr. Bell, in his edition of the Poems of Greene 

 and Marlowe (London, 1856), prints the entire of 

 this curious piece of advice, which Greene ad- 

 dressed to " the Satanic School " of his day in 

 the following words : — 



" To those Gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that 

 Spend their Wits in making Plays, R. G. wisheth a 

 better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." 



The atheism of Marlowe is rebuked with more 

 compunction indeed, but in a high-handed tone 

 that reminds one of the furious onslaught of 

 Southey just alluded to. Mr. Bell makes the 

 following remarks on the passage referring to 

 Shakspeare, to which I would respectfully draw 

 the attention of your correspondent A. A. \V. : — 



" Dibdin, in his Reminiscences, observes that there is 

 not the slightest mention of Shakspeare by any oontenr- 

 purancous writer. lie had overlooked this address, which 

 not only contains a very remarkable reference to Shak- 



