OCRed data provided
for searching only. pWrapPolygonVertices8;7;(0,0);(0,21596);(7845,21596);(7845,20475);(21584,20475);(21584,0);(0,0);fBehindDocument1The first question is as to whether the reference is to Juvenal. The
slander is said to be in the book which Hamlet carries, and to be by a "satirical rogue." And certainly the description of the passage fits Juvenal's satire better than any other now known printed passage. So of Warburton's identification Anders justly says, "This seems 'very likely."' If one will turn to the Flores Poetarum, he will find under De Seneetute, the grammar models from the Latin poets on old age. The longest of them by far is Juvenal's, with the "most weak hams" mostly omitted, of course, because Juvenal had been too scandalously concrete in his descriptive inventory of that weakness. His is the only description of the kind. There can be no question that it is at least the ultimate literary ancestor of Shakspere's passage. And it is the passage of which every learned grammarian would think, being the parent model for all such descriptions. That part of the audience which identified the passage at all should certainly have identified it as Juvenal's. Every grammarian who had modelled upon the Flores, or had read his Juvenal ought to have recognized
the passage, and no other similar passage could have been so com-
monplace for the audience. Indeed, I do not know that any other pas¾age has been proposed. I do not see how the "satirical rogue"
of the description as it was found in the printed book of the "satirical ', rogue," whom we identify as Juvenal; and this would be the original Latin, for the descrip4...n d....s not rest on a.l... excerpts in Flores.
3 Anders, Shakespeare's Boob, p. 38.
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