SUMMING UP OF THE WORK, 343 exposition of the practice will cause the cessation of such inhuman superstition? I have thus, in these two volumes, gone through the various forms and phases of name which PUCK has attained in very remote ages, of which one, as a continuous and connecting link, is that of a Burthen, back-borne, subsequently reduced to load of sticks, literally so found in all the legends of the Man in the Moon, which the Latins adopted as their kid bearer (see the figure, vol. i. p. 239); now only explainable by the double meaning of kid in the English language, as the young of the goat, and as a faggot of sticks. This renders the most solemn adjuration by the Styg (their numen Stygius) reducible to a literal version of a Puck synonym, as we again find it in the Prussian deities, Ber-stuccas, equivalent to stick-bearers. Under the milder Christian dispensation the emblem of the kid bearer was transferred to the lamb borne by the orthodox bonus pastor (vol. i. p. 252); but in the Northern mythologies the faggot is preferred to the animal, and thence the "Tempest" of Shakespeare, and the olden Teutonic tales on which it is founded, mix bearing of logs so much with their fables! The frontispieces to the two volumes exhibit instances of backbearing; that of Vol. i. from classic art, where Cupid can o'erstride Hercules by this position; and of Vol. ii., where the supposed magical Northern figures have a double back-burthen; just as the Wendic Puck of the wood-cut on the title-page had evidently something originally borne on the shoulders. Puck himself, originally the universal Deity Bog 344 AND FINAL CONCLUSION. (whence the purely Eastern god Bacchus), becomes, on the succumbence of the heathen to the Christian creed, the denomination of everything hated and odious (see vol. ii. p. 45 ff.): as Thor, however, and Herman, the wild hunter, he is found identical with Janus (chap. ix.), and also with Friar Rush (chap. x.); also as Crodo, with the Wendic Flins, and Zernibog. This intimate acquaintance, which we recognise in Shakespeare with Teutonic and Wendic mythology, is adduced amongst the other proofs of the necessity of our poet's knowledge of them having been obtainable only by an abode in the country; and this is farther confirmed by comparison of the plots and conduct of some of his dramas with those of the Nürnberg notary, Jacob Ayrer, senior, who had finished writing for the stage before Shakespeare took up métier of playwright. the Such is a faint outline of the purport of these two volumes: they tend to prove that Shakespeare got much of his earliest aspirations out of England, and would account for and fill up worthily the three years of his life from 1586 to 1589, now universally admitted as a blank in his career. As, therefore, a new and hitherto unattempted effort towards completing the biography of our immortal bard, it is to be hoped that the merit of the enterprise may excuse any defects in the execution. I shall claim from critics the immunity attaching to all great undertakings by the Latins : 66 Quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe FINIS. 7 |