The epithet of Divine was
well bestowed on this great painter of the human heart. The
invention implied in his different tales is immense: but we are not
to infer that it is all his own. He probably availed himself of all
the common traditions which were floating in his time, and which he
was the first to appropriate. Homer appears the most original of all
authors--probably for no other reason than that we can trace the
plagiarism no further. Boccaccio has furnished subjects to
numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and narrative. The
story of Griselda is borrowed from his DECAMERON by Chaucer; as is
the KNIGHT'S TALE (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of the THESEID.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be
this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that
mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit; with
Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their
dispute after dinner on 'the golden cadences of poesy'; with Costard
the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a
character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear
without his fellow courtiers and the king: and if we were to leave
out the ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we
believe we may let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall
hardly venture to 'set a mark of reprobation on it'.
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