But it so happens that the size of the foot of Hercules has no more to do with the real point of the allusion than the length of Prester John's; therefore _ex pede Herculem_ is a most unfortunate illustration,--particularly awkward in a specimen sample, the excellence of which may be questioned. {29} It is singular enough, and it says a great deal for Theobald's common sense, that _he_ saw what the true intention of the allusion must be, although he did not know how to reconcile it with the existing letter of the text. He wished to preserve _the spirit_ by the sacrifice of _the letter_, while Mr. Knight preserves the letter but misinterprets the spirit. Theobald's word "shows," in the sense of externals, is very nearly what Shakspeare meant by _shoes_, except that _shoes_ implies a great deal more than _shows_,--it implies the assumption of the character as well as the externals of Hercules. Out of five quotations from our old poets, given by Steevens in the first edition of his note, there is not one in which _the shoes_ are not provided with _feet_. But Malone, to his immortal honour, was the first to furnish them with _hoofs_: "Upon an ass; _i.e._ upon the hoofs of an ass."--_Malone._ But Shakspeare nowhere alludes to feet! His ass most probably _had feet_, and so had Juvenal's verse (when he talks of his "satyra sumente cothurnum"); but neither Shakspeare nor Juvenal dreamed of any necessary connexion between the feet and the shoes. Therein lies the difference between Shakspeare and "our old poets;" a difference that ought to be sufficient, of itself, to put down the common cry,--that Shakspeare borrowed his allusions from them. If so, how is it that his expositors, with these old poets before their eyes all this time, together with their own scholarship to boot, have so widely mistaken the true point of his allusion? It is precisely because they _have_ confined their researches to these old poets, and have _not_ followed Shakspeare to the fountain head. There is a passage in Quintilian which, very probably, has been the common source of both Shakspeare's version, and that of the old poets; with this difference, that he understood the original and they did not. Quintilian is cautioning against the introduction of solemn bombast in trifling affairs: "To get up," says he, "this sort of pompous tragedy about mean matters, is as though you would dress up children with the _mask_ and _buskins_ of Hercules." ["Nam in parvis quidem litibus has tragoedias movere tale est quale si _personam_ Herculis et _cothurnos_ aptare infantibus velis."] Here the addition of the _mask_ proves that the allusion is purely theatrical. The mask and buskins are put for the stage trappings, or _properties_, of the part of Hercules: of these, one of the items was the _lion's skin_; and hence the extreme aptitude of the allusion, as applied by the Bastard, in _King John_, to Austria, who was assuming the importance of Coeur de Lion!