Scholars like Bacon do not
use bad translations of easy Latin authors. If Bacon wanted
Plutarch, he went to Plutarch in Greek, not to an English translation
of a French translation of a Latin translation.
Some works of Shakespeare, the Lucrece, for example, and The Comedy
of Errors (if he were not working over an earlier canvas from a more
learned hand), and other passages, show knowledge of Latin texts
which in his day had not appeared in published translations, or had
not been translated at all as far as we know. In my opinion Will had
Latin enough to puzzle out the sense of the Latin, never difficult,
for himself. He could also "get a construe," when in London, or help
in reading, from a more academic acquaintance: or buy a construe at
no high ransom from some poor scholar. No contemporary calls him
scholarly; the generation of men who were small boys when he died
held him for no scholar. The current English literature of his day
was saturated with every kind of classical information; its readers,
even if Latinless, knew, or might know a world of lore with which the
modern man is seldom acquainted. The ignorant Baconian marvels: the
classically educated Baconian who is not familiar with Elizabethan
literature is amazed. Really there is nothing worthy of their
wonder.
Does any contemporary literary allusion to Shakespeare call him
"LEARNED"? He is "sweet," "honey-tongued," "mellifluous," and so
forth, but I ask for any contemporary who flattered him with the
compliment of "learned.
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