APPENDICES. 257 



parrot, or the most imitative monkey that ever 

 lived, as he has said of the lowest savage ? Surely 

 this is conclusive against his theory, which he has 

 truly termed " only an hypothesis." 



APPENDIX M, PAGE 145. 



Professor Tyndall should have added, "or the 

 author of Hamlet, Othello, &c. In a newly-trans- 

 lated work (Dr. Benno Tschischwitz ' Shdkespeare- 

 ForschungenL, Halle, 1868), commenting on the philo- 

 sophy of Giordano Bruno, the author notes Bruno's 

 influence on the Elizabethian dramatists, and declares 

 that Hamlet, when he compares " the sun breeding 

 maggots in a dead dog to a god kissing carrion " 

 (act ii., sc. 2, 1. 181), is quoting Bruno's Spaccio. 

 In Professor TyndalTs masterly Address at Belfast, 

 as President of the British Association in 1874, 

 there is an account of Bruno's Philosophy and the 

 Atomic Doctrines, which introduced into England by 

 Bruno, were followed, " in whole or in part, by Bacon, 

 Descartes, Newton, &c., and their successors " (p. 26). 

 Now it is remarkable that Bruno visited the court of 

 Elizabeth from 15831586. Bacon had been called 

 to the bar in 1581-2, after his wonderful University 

 career; was fast rising in his profession when 

 Bruno was in England, and his knowledge of Italian 

 enabled him to read Bruno's works in Italian, and 

 which have only been translated into English in the 

 19th century. Shakespeare came as a rustic lad, with 

 a " little smattering of Latin and no Greek," in the 

 year 1587, after Bruno had left England, to begin 

 S 



