Note 1049 — Chapter XVII · THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.
Reading edition
Dr. Zachary Grey has the following observations in his Notes on Shakspeare (London, 1754, vol. i. p. 112). In commenting on the passage in King Lear, Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness, he says, “This is one of Shakspeare’s most remarkable anachronisms. King Lear succeeded his father Bladud anno mundi 3105; and Nero, anno mundi 4017, was sixteen years old, when he married Octavia, Cæsar’s daughter. See Funcii Chronologia, p. 94.”
Such a supposed chronological discrepancy would hardly be pointed out in any commentary now written.
The introduction prefixed by Mr. Giles, to his recent translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1842), gives a just view both of the use which our old poets made of his tales, and of the general credence so long and so unsuspectingly accorded to them. The list of old British kings given by Mr. Giles also deserves attention, as a parallel to the Grecian genealogies anterior to the Olympiads.