learning was to be picked up from almost every English book that he could
take into his hands." For not to insist upon Stephen Bateman's _Golden
booke of the leaden Goddes_, 1577, and several other laborious
compilations on the subject, all this and much more Mythology might as
perfectly have been learned from the _Testament of Creseide_, and the
_Fairy Queen_, as from a regular Pantheon, or Polymetis himself.

Mr. Upton, not contented with _Heathen_ learning, when he finds it in the
text, must necessarily superadd it, when it appears to be wanting; because
Shakespeare most certainly hath lost it by accident!

In _Much ado about Nothing_, Don Pedro says of the insensible Benedict,
"He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little _Hangman_
dare not shoot at him."

This mythology is not recollected in the Ancients, and therefore the
critick hath no doubt but his Author wrote "_Henchman,--a Page, Pusio_: and
_this_ word seeming too hard for the Printer, he translated the little
Urchin into a _Hangman_, a character no way belonging to him."

But this character was not borrowed from the Ancients;--it came from the
_Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney:

Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives;
While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove:
Till now at length that Jove an office gives,
(At Juno's suite who much did Argus love)
In this our world a _Hangman_ for to be
Of all those fooles that will have all they see.--B. 2. Ch. 14.

I know it may be objected on the authority of such Biographers as
Theophilus Cibber, and the Writer of the Life of Sir Philip, prefixed to
the modern Editions, that the _Arcadia_ was not published before 1613, and
consequently too late for this imitation: but I have a Copy in my own
possession, printed for W. Ponsonbie, 1590, 4to. which hath escaped the
notice of the industrious Ames, and the rest of our typographical
Antiquaries.

Thus likewise every word of antiquity is to be cut down to the classical
standard.

In a Note on the Prologue to _Troilus and Cressida_ (which, by the way, is
not met with in the _Quarto_), Mr. Theobald informs us that the very
_names_ of the gates of Troy have been barbarously demolished by the
Editors: and a deal of learned dust he makes in setting them right again;
much however to Mr. Heath's satisfaction. Indeed the learning is modestly
withdrawn from the later Editions, and we are quietly instructed to rea