St. Lucia, May, 1851.
[The passage will be found in _Disputationum Roberti Bellarmini,
de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei: De Summo Pontifice_, lib. iv.
cap. v. sect. 8.: Pragæ, 1721, fol., vol. i. p. 456.:
"8. Secundò, quia tunc necessariò erraret, etiam circa fidem. Nam
fides Catholica docet, omnem virtutem esse bonam, omne vitium esse
malum: si autem Papa erraret præcipiendo vitia, vel prohibendo
virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere, vitia esse bona, et virtutes
malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare. Tenetur enim in
rebus dubiis Ecclesia acquiescere judicio summi Pontificis, et
facere quod ille præcipit; non facere, quod ille prohibet; ac nè
fortè contra conscientiam agat, tenetur credere bonum esse, quod
ille præcipit: malum, quod ille prohibet."]
Replies.
SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF "CAPTIOUS" AND "INTENIBLE." SHAKSPEARE'S "SMALL
LATIN."
(Vol. ii., p. 354.; Vol. iii., p. 65.)
This is another discussion in which Shakspeare's love of antithesis has
not been sufficiently recognised.
The contrast in this case is in the ideas--ever receiving, never
retaining: an allusion to the hopeless punishment of the Danaïdes, so
beautifully appropriate, so unmistakeably apparent, and so well
supported in the context, that I should think it unnecessary to offer a
comment upon it had the question been raised by a critic less
distinguished than Mr. Singer; or if I did not fancy that I perceive the
origin of what I believe to be his mistake, in the misreading of another
line, the last in his quotation.
The hopelessness of Helena's love is cheerfully endured; she glories in
it:
"I know I love in vain--strive against hope--
Yet still outpour the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still."
This last line Mr. Singer reads, "and fail not to lose still;" but
surely _that_ is not Helena's meaning? She means that her spring of love
is inexhaustible; that, notwithstanding the constant, hopeless waste,
there lacks not (a supply) "to lose still!"
Johnson was one of those commentators enumerated by Mr. Singer, of whom
he observes, as a matter of surprise, "that none of them should have
remarked that the sense of the Latin 'captiosus,' and of its congeners
in Italian and French, is deceitful, fallacious;" "and," he adds, "Bacon
uses the word for 'insidious,' 'ensnaring.'" But surely Johnson the
commentator was no other than Johnson the lexicographer; and yet, for
these precise definitions of "captious," which J. S. W. thinks "_too
refined and recondite_" for Shakspeare's "small Latin," we need apply to
no higher source than to that familiar household companion--_Johnson's
Dictionary_, wherein is anticipated the citation of Bacon, and even of
the French word "captieux."
It could not therefore be from ignorance that Johnson failed to propose
this recondite sense, but from a conviction that it would not represent
the true meaning of Shakspeare.
It will be perceived that, in appreciation of "captious," I side with
Steevens, Malone, Knight, Collier, and even with J.S.W.; in whom,
however, with his irreverent allusion to "_a man_ who had small Latin,"
I can recognise no true worshipper of Shakspeare.
Why should Shakspeare be constantly twitted with this "small Latin," as
if the "_school-like gloss_" of a hundred Porsons could add one
scintilla to the glory of his name? His was the universal language of
nature; and well does Mr. Singer remark that "We all know, by intuition
as it were, what Shakspeare meant." It is true that we discuss his mere
words in the endeavour to school our understandings to HIS level; but
he, hedged by the divinity of immeasurable genius, must, himself, be
sacred;--to attempt to measure his attainments by our finite estimation,
is indeed sacrilege!
In retailing Ben Jonson's unluckily chosen expression, J.S.W. does not
seem to be aware that it has been doubted, and ably doubted, by Mr.
Knight, in his _History of Opinion_, that Jonson himself used it by any
means in the pedagogue sense usually adopted. And it does seem scarcely
credible that Jonson would give utterance to a puff so miserably
threadbare, so absurd too on the very face of it; for in what possible
way could an alleged deficiency of Greek and Latin _in Shakspeare_,
affect a comparison, _made by Jonson_, between Shakspeare and the poets
of Greece and Rome? As well might it be said that ignorance of the Greek
language, in Napoleon Buonaparte, would prevent a parallel between him
and Alexander the Great! What if Ben Jonson meant his fifth line to
continue the supposition of the first?--"_though_" is a word which has a
hypothetical, as well as an admissive meaning; and there is no
difficulty in reading his lines in this way:
"_If_ I thought my judgment were of yours, and _though_ thy
learning were less; still I would not seek to compare thee with
modern men, but call forth thundering Eschylus," &c.
But I should like to ask J. S. W., as the nearest example from the same
play, which does he really think would require the _larger_ Latin,--to
discover the trite and only meaning of "captiosus," or to use _triple_
in the sense conferred upon it in Helena's description, to the King, of
her father's legacy? We have not at present in the English language any
equivalent for that word as Shakspeare used it, and of which he has left
us another example in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where the triumvir is
called "the triple pillar of the world." We have failed to take
advantage of the lesson given us by our great master, and consequently
our language is deprived of what would have been a most convenient
acquisition.
It is true that Johnson gives a definition of "triple," in reference to
its application to Antony, viz., "consisting of three conjoined;" but
that meaning, however it might be applicable to the triumvirate
collectively, is certainly not so to the members individually. To meet
Shakspeare's use of the word, the definition must be extended to
"consisting of, _or belonging to_, three conjoined:" a sense in which
"triplex" was undoubtedly used by the Latins. Ovid would call the
triumvirate "viri triplices," and of course each one must be "vir
triplex;" but perhaps the clearest instance of the triune application is
where he addresses the Fates (in _Ibin._ 76.) as spinning out "triplici
pollice" (with triple thumb) the allotted task. Now as only one of the
sisters held the thread, there could be but one individual thumb engaged
(although with a sort of reflective ownership to all three); and there
can be no question that Ovid would apply the same term to the shears of
Atropos, or the distaff of Clotho.
Here, then, is a _really recondite_ meaning, fairly traced to
Shakspeare's own reading; for had he borrowed it from any one else, some
trace of it would be found, and Warburton need not have stultified
himself by his sapient note--"IMPROPERLY USED FOR THIRD!"
But to return to "captious," there is, after all, no such great
difference whether it be one's goods, or one's wits, that are taken
possession of; or whether the capture be effected by avidity or fraud;
both meanings unite in our own word "caption:" and there seems no good
reason why "captious" should not derive from "caption," as readily as
"cautious" from "caution." It is for the antithesis I contend, as a key
to the true sense intended by Shakspeare: the whole play is full of
antitheses, uttered especially by Helena;--and certainly, if we
recognise the allusion to the Danaïdes (as who will not?), we cannot,
without depriving it of half its force and beauty, receive "captious" in
the sense of "deceptious." The Danaïdes _were not_ deceived--the essence
of their punishment was utter absence of hope; Tantalus _was_
deceived--the essence of _his_ punishment was hope ever recurring.
With respect to the suggestion of "capacious" by W.F.S. (p. 229.), he
could not have read Mr. Singer's paper with attention, or he would have
perceived that he had been anticipated by Farmer, who, by elision, had
obviated the metrical objection of J.S.W. (p. 430.). But the meaning of
"capacious" is "capable of containing," and, as such, it would be more
than antithetical, it would be contradictory, to "intenible." If
_capacious_ be consistent with _leaky_, then the "uxor secreti capax"
must have been rather an unsafe confidante.