E tanto piu del dover trapassa il segno?" As no English translation has been made of the Orlando Innamorato, I must ask the reader who can not command the original to be content with this rendering of the above stanza: "The man who steals a horn, a horse, a ring, Or such a trifle, thieves with moderation, And may be justly called a robberling; But he who takes away a reputation And pranks in feathers from another's wing His deed is robbery--assassination, And merits punishment so much the greater As he to right and truth is more a traitor." Shakespeare, by R. G. White, vol. I, p. 23. ** Of Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian from whom the plot of the "Hamlet" was taken, Whalley says, writing in 1748, that "no translation hath yet been made," must have been read by the writer of "Hamlet" in the original. "An Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare," etc. By Peter Whalley, A. B., Fellow of St. John's College, London. Printed for J. Waller at the Crown and Mitre, 1748--And see a suggestion that the "Hamlet" came from Germany, in a pamphlet "On the Double Personality of the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus, the Hamlet of Shakespeare. Its Relation to the German Hamlet." By Dr. Latham, Royal Society of Literature Transactions. 1878. Also, "Shakespeare in Germany. Alfred Cohn. Berlin and London. 1874. {065}"Merchant of Venice" was "Venetian" instead of "crowner's quest" Jaw; admit that William Shakespeare "had the advantages in school of something more than the mere rudiments of learning;" admit that "his devotion to his family drove him forth from the rural seclusion of Stratford into the battle of the great world;" that the immortal gift of the second-best bed was, (we quote from Mr. Grant White, who is apparently willing to sacrifice anybody's reputation if he can thereby prove his William to have been a prodigy of virtue no less than of genius), explained by the fact that, at the time of the hurried marriage, a husband had to be provided for Mistress Hathaway without loss of time, and that little Susannah was as much of a surprise to William as to any body--in other words, that Anne was "no better than she should be," (oblivious of the fact that "the premature Susannah" was William Shakespeare's favorite child; that he, at least, never doubted her paternity, for he left her the bulk of his fortune in his will);or even that--according to Steevens, that testamentary second thought was actually "a mark of rare confidence and devotion;" granted all these--if they have anything to do with the question--and a dozen more, and we only attenuate, by the exact value of these, {066}the mountain of probability, nothing less than the complete dilapidation and disappearance of which could leave room for substitution, In the stead of the probability, the _possibility_ of such a suspension of the laws