As to the bare fact of the influence, there can be little question. That Shakespeare in one scene in the TEMPEST versifies a passage from the prose of Florio's translation of Montaigne's chapter OF THE CANNIBALS has been recognised by all the commentators since Capell (1767), who detected the transcript from a reading of the French only, not having compared the translation. The first thought of students was to connect the passage with Ben Jonson's allusion in VOLPONE1 to frequent "stealings from Montaigne" by contemporary writers; and though VOLPONE dates from 1605, and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or

1 Lady Politick Would-be. All our English writers,

I mean such as are happy in the Italian,

Will deign to steal out of this author [Pastor Fido] mainly
Almost as much as from Montaigniè:

He has so modern and facile a vein,

Fitting the time, and catching the court ear.

Act III, Sc. 2.

surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on the dramatist went further than the passage in question. John Sterling, writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on the autograph of Shakespeare in a copy of Florio had called special attention to the Essays), remarked that "on the whole, the celebrated soliloquy in HAMLET presents a more characteristic and expressive resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember"; and further threw out the germ of a thesis which has since been disastrously developed, to the effect that "the Prince of Denmark is very nearly a Montaigne, lifted to a higher eminence, and agitated by more striking circumstances and a severer destiny, and altogether a somewhat more passionate structure 1 of man." 2 In 1846, again, Philarète Chasles, an acute and original critic, citing the passage in the TEMPEST, went on to declare that "once on the

This is now generally held to be a forgery; but Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt (Shakespear, 1902, p. 73) argues that the presumption is still in its favour. It is to be feared that presumption has not been strengthened by the publication of Mr. Francis P. Gervais, Shakespeare not Bacon (4t0, 1901), in which it is argued that not only the autograph but the annotations on the volume are Shakespeare's. They consist mainly of Latin maxims, mostly in a neat Italic hand.

2 London and Westminster Review, July 1838, p. 321.

track of the studies and tastes of Shakespeare, we find Montaigne at every corner, in HAMLET, in OTHELLO, in CORIOLANUS. Even the composite style of Shakespeare, so animated, so vivid, so new, so incisive, so coloured, so hardy, offers a multitude of striking analogies to the admirable and free manner of Montaigne.' The suggestion as to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy has been taken up by some critics, but rejected by others; and the propositions of M. Chasles, so far as I am aware, have never been supported by evidence. Nevertheless, the general fact of a frequent reproduction or manipulation of Montaigne's ideas in some of Shakespeare's later plays has, I think, since been established.

In 1884 I incidentally cited, in an essay on the composition of HAMLET, some dozen of the Essays of Montaigne from which Shakespeare had apparently received suggestions, and instanced one or two cases in which actual peculiarities of phrase in Florio's translation of the Essays are adopted by him, in addition to a peculiar coincidence which has been independently pointed out by Mr. Jacob Feis in his work entitled SHAKSPERE AND MONTAIGNE; and since then the late Mr.

1 Article in Journal des Débats, November 7, 1846, reprinted in L'Angleterre au seizième siècle, ed. 1879, p. 136.

Henry Morley, in his edition of the Florio translation, has pointed to a still more remarkable coincidence of phrase, in a passage of HAMLET which I had traced to Montaigne without noticing the decisive verbal agreement in question. Yet, so far as I have seen, the matter has passed for little more than a literary curiosity, arousing no new ideas as to Shakespeare's mental development. The notable suggestion of Chasles on that head has been ignored more completely than the theory of Mr. Feis, which in comparison is merely fantastic. Either, then, there is an unwillingness in England to conceive of Shakespeare as owing much to foreign influences, or as a case of intelligible mental growth; or else the whole critical problem which Shakespeare represents—and he may be regarded as the greatest of critical problemscomes within the general disregard for serious criticism, noticeable among us of late years. the work of Mr. Feis, unfortunately, is as a whole so extravagant that it could hardly fail to bring a special suspicion on every form of the theory of an intellectual tie between Shakespeare and Montaigne. Not only does he undertake to show in dead earnest what Sterling had vaguely suggested as conceivable, that Shakespeare meant Hamlet to represent Montaigne, but he strenuously argues

And

that the poet framed the play in order to discredit Montaigne's opinions—a thesis which almost makes the Bacon theory specious by comparison. Naturally it has made no converts, even in Germany, where, as it happens, it had been anticipated.

In France, however, the neglect of the special problem of Montaigne's influence on Shakespeare is less easily to be explained, seeing how much intelligent study has been given of late by French critics to both Shakespeare and Montaigne. The influence is recognised; but here again it is only cursorily traced. An able study of Montaigne has been produced by M. Paul Stapfer, a vigilant critic, whose services to Shakespeare-study have been recognised in both countries. But all that M. Stapfer claims for the influence of the French essayist on the English dramatist is thus put :

"Montaigne is perhaps too purely French to have exercised much influence abroad. Nevertheless his influence on England is not to be disdained. Shakspere appreciated him (le goûtait); he has inserted in the TEMPEST a passage of the chapter DES CANNIBALES; and the strong expressions of the Essays on man, the inconstant, irresolute being, contrary to himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were perhaps not unconnected with (peut-être pas étrangères à) the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene of the grave-diggers must have felt the savour and retained the impression of this thought, humid and cold as the grave: 'The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are but the repast of a little worm.' The translation of Plutarch,