t his unbelief, with the
effect of making one thought overlay the other; and in this fused form
the discussion may easily have reached Shakspere's eye and ear. So it
would be with the echo of two Senecan passages noted by Mr. Munro in the
verses on "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller
returns." In the HERCULES FURENS[71] we have:

"Nemo ad id sero venit, unde nunquam
Quum semel venit potuit reverti;"

and in the HERCULES OETAEUS[72] there is the same thought:

"regnum canis inquieti
Unde non unquam remeavit ullus."

But here, as elsewhere, Seneca himself was employing a standing
sentiment, for in the best known poem of Catullus we have:

"Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam."[73]

And though there was in Shakspere's day no English translation of
Catullus, the commentators long ago noted[74] that in Sandford's
translation of Cornelius Agrippa (? 1569), there occurs the phrase, "The
countrie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot return," a fuller
parallel to the passage in the soliloquy than anything cited from the
classics.

Finally, in Marlowe's EDWARD II.,[75] written before 1593, we have:

"Weep not for Mortimer,
That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown."[76]

So that, without going to the Latin, we have obvious English sources for
notable parts of the soliloquy.

Thus, though Shakspere may (1) have seen part of the Florio translation,
or separate translations of some of the essays, before the issue of the
First Quarto; or may (2) easily have heard that very point discussed by
Florio, who was the friend of his friend Jonson, or by those who had
read the original; or may even (3) himself have read in the original;
and though further it seems quite certain that his "consummation
devoutly to be wished" was an echo of Florio's translation of the
Apology of Socrates; on the other hand we are not entitled to trace the
soliloquy as a whole to Montaigne's stimulation of Shakspere's thought.
That Shakspere read Montaigne in the original once seemed probable to
me, as to others; but, on closer study, I consider it unlikely, were it
only because the Montaigne influence in his work begins, as aforesaid,
in HAMLET. Of all the apparent coincidences I have noticed between
Shakspere's previous plays and the essays, none has any evidential
value. (1) The passage on the music of the