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son's pronouncement in 1623 were willing to grant to Shakspere Art. William Barks ted in 1607 says
His Song was worthie merrit (Shakspeare hee)
sung the faire blossome, thou the withered tree Laurell is due to him, his art and wit hath purchast it, Cypres thy brow will fit."
Bar'ksted also was an actor, though not of Shakspere's company. Was he advertising?
Similarly, John Taylor the water poet, whose admitted educational deficiencies were later to give Dr. Farmer so much pleasure, exposes in 162o his low standards of Art.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, who the Lawrell wore, Spencer, and Shakespeare did in Art excell, Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniell.2$
But probably it was the good company into which Shakspere hap-pens to get inserted which here occasions the Art. Taylor, too, was closely acquainted with Shakspere's fellows.
Someone at Stratford also bestowed both Nature and Art upon Shakspere before the First Folio was printed in 1623. And such Art! -"Arte Maronem"-no less than Virgil, the highest, would do. For while the grammar school and Shakspere himself really preferred Ovid as a guide to writing poetry, yet he was hardly the man to take to the grave with you. The semi-prophet Virgil was much more in place there. With Shakspere, "Qvick Natvre Dide," and
All, yt he hath writt,
Leaves living Art, but page, to serve his witt.
Though critics may have doubts as to the quality of the author's Latin-"small Lavine" perches even over Shakspere's grave-they yet have none as to his intentions. He meant to attribute the superlative degree both of Art and of Nature to Shakspere.
Practically throughout Shakspere's career, then, critics had con-tended that Shakspere needed greater Art, and his friends had answered that his work approved his Art. Too, from around r 6oo, if not somewhat earlier, Jonson as the representative of Art had been
26 Chambers, Shakespeare, Vol. II, p. 216. ' Chambers, Shakespeare, Vol. II, p. 126.
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