Stratford, and over the precincts of the church itself." We shall have occasion to revert to this distinction between the borough and the parish, at a more advanced period in the life of Shakspere's father, when his utter ruin has been somewhat rashly inferred from certain obscure registers.

Seeing, then, that at any rate, in the year 1574, when John Shakspere purchased two freehold houses in Stratford, it was scarcely necessary for him to withdraw his son William from school, as Rowe has it, on account of the narrowness of his circumstances (the education at that school costing the father nothing), it is not difficult to believe that the son remained there till the period when boys were usually withdrawn from grammar-schools. In those days the education of the university commenced much earlier than at present. Boys intended for the learned professions, and more especially for the church, commonly went to Oxford and Cambridge at eleven or twelve years of age. If they were not intended for those professions, they probably remained at the grammar-school till they were thirteen or fourteen; and then they were fitted for being apprenticed to tradesmen, or articled to attorneys, a numerous and thriving body in those days of cheap litigation. Many also went early to the Inns of Court, which were the universities of the law, and where there was real study and discipline in direct connection with the several Societies. To assume that William Shakspere did not stay long enough at the grammarschool of Stratford to obtain a very fair "proficiency in Latin," with some knowledge of Greek, is to assume an absurdity upon the face of the circumstances; and it could never have been assumed at all, had not Rowe, setting out upon a false theory, that, because in the works of Shakspere "we scarce find any traces of anything that looks like an imitation of the ancients," held that therefore "his not copying at least something from them may be an argument of his never having read them." Opposed to this is the statement of Aubrey, much nearer to the times of Shakspere: "he understood Latin pretty well.” Rowe had been led into his illogical inference by the "small Latin and less Greek" of Jonson; the "old mother-wit" of Denham; the "his learning was very little" of Fuller; the "native wood-notes wild" of Milton,-phrases, every one of which is to be taken with considerable qualification, whether we regard the peculiar characters of the utterers, or the circumstances connected with the words themselves. The question rests not upon the interpretation of the dictum of this authority or that; but upon the indisputable fact that the very earliest writings of Shakspere are imbued with a spirit of classical antiquity; and that the allusive nature of the learning that manifests itself in them, whilst it offers the best proof of his familiarity with the ancient writers, is a circumstance which has misled those who never attempted to dispute the existence of the learning which was displayed in the direct pedantry of his contemporaries. "If," said Hales of Eton, "he had not read the classics, he had likewise not stolen from them." Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and all the early dramatists, overload their plays with quotation and mythological allusion. According to Hales, they steal, and therefore they have read. He who uses his knowledge skilfully is assumed not to have read.

It is not our intention to enter upon a general examination of the various opinions that have been held as to the learning of Shakspere, and the tendency of those opinions to show that he was without learning.* We only desire to point out, by a very few observations, that the learning manifested in his early productions does not bear out the assertion of Rowe that his proficiency in the Latin language was interrupted by his early removal from the free-school of Stratford. His youthful poem, Venus and Adonis, the first heir of his invention, is upon a classical subject. The Rape of Lucrece is founded upon a legend of the beginnings of Roman history. Would he have ventured upon these subjects had he been unfamiliar with the ancient writers, from the attentive study of which he could alone obtain the knowledge which would enable him to treat them with propriety? His was an age of sound scholarship. He dedicates both poems to a scholar, and a patron of scholars. Does any one of his contemporaries object that these classical subjects were treated by a young man ignorant of the classics? Will the most critical examination of these poems detect anything that betrays this ignorance? Is there not the most perfect keeping in both these poems,-an original conception of the mode of treating these subjects, advisedly adopted with the full knowledge of what might be imitated, but preferring the vigorous painting of nature to any imitation? Love's Labour's Lost, undoubtedly one of the earliest comedies, showsupon the principle laid down by Coleridge, that "a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits"-that the habits of William Shakspere "had been scholastic, and those of a student." The Comedy of Errors is full of those imitations of the ancients in particular passages which critics have in all cases been too apt to take as the chief evidences of learning. The critics of Shakspere are puzzled by these imitations; and when they see with what skill he adopts, or amends, or rejects, the incidents of the Menæchmi' of Plautus, they have no resource but to contend that his knowledge of Plautus was derived from a wretched translation, published in all probability eight or ten years after the Comedy of Errors was written. The three Parts of Henry VI. are the earliest of the historical plays. Those who dispute the genuineness of the First Part affirm that it contains more allusions to mythology and classical authors than Shakspere ever uses; but, with a most singular inconsistency, in the passages of the Second and Third Parts which they have chosen to pronounce as the additions of Shakspere to the original plays of another writer or writers, there are to be found as many allusions to mythology and classical writers as in the part which they deny to be his. We have remarked upon these passages that they furnish the proof that, as a young writer, he possessed a competent knowledge of the ancient authors, and was not unwilling to display it; "but that, with that wonderful judgment which was as remarkable as the prodigious range of his imaginative powers, he soon learnt to avoid the pedantry to which inferior men so pertinaciously clung in the pride of their scholarship."

This question is further touched upon in our 'History of Opinion on the Writings of Shakspere.'-Section I.

See our Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III. Histories, Vol. II. page 432.

Ranging over the whole dramatic works of Shakspere, whenever we find a classical image or allusion, such as in Hamlet,

"A station like the herald Mercury,

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,"—

the management of the idea is always elegant and graceful; and the passage may sustain a contrast with the most refined imitations of his contemporaries, or of his own imitator, Milton. In his Roman plays he appears co-existent with his wonderful characters, and to have read all the obscure pages of Roman history with a clearer eye than philosopher or historian. When he employs Latinisms in the construction of his sentences, and even in the creation of new words, he does so with singuiar facility and unerring correctness. And then, we are to be told, he managed all this by studying bad translations, and by copying extracts from grammars and dictionaries; as if it was reserved for such miracles of talent and industry as the Farmers and the Steevenses to read Ovid and Virgil in their original tongues, whilst the dull Shakspere, whether schoolboy or adult, was to be contented through life with the miserable translations. of Arthur Golding and Thomas Phaer.* We believe that his familiarity at least with the best Roman writers was begun early, and continued late; and that he, of all boys of Stratford, would be the least likely to discredit the teaching of Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, the masters of the grammar-school from 1572 till 1580.

The happy days of boyhood are nearly over. William Shakspere no longer looks for the close of the day when, in that humble chamber in Henley Street, his father shall hear something of his school progress, and read with him some

* See a series of learned and spirited papers by Dr. Maginn on Farmer's Essay, printed in Frazer's Magazine. 1839.

English book of history or travel,-volumes which the active presses of London had sent cheaply amongst the people. The time is arrived when he has quitted the free-school. His choice of a worldly occupation is scarcely yet made. The wishes of his father, whatever they may be, are rather hinted at than carried out. It is that pause which so often takes place in the life of a youth, when the world shows afar off like a vast plain with many paths, all bright and sunny, and losing themselves in the distance, where it is fancied there is something brighter still. At this season we may paint the family of John Shakspere at their evening fireside. The mother is plying her distaff, or hearing Richard his lesson out of the A B C book. The father and the elder son are each intent upon a book of chronicles, manly reading. Gilbert is teaching his sister Joan Gamut, "the ground of all accord;" whilst the little Anne, a petted child, is wilfully twanging upon the lute which her sister has laid down. A neighbour comes in upon business with the father, who quits the room; and then all the group crowd round their elder brother, who has laid aside his chronicle, to entreat him for a story; the mother even joins in the children's prayer to their gentle brother. Has not he, himself, pictured such a home scene? May we not read for Hermione, Mary Shakspere, and for Mamillius, William ?—

"

And truly that boy had access to a prodigious mine of such stories, whether "merry or sad." He had a copy, well thumbed from his first reading days, of The Palace of Pleasure, beautified, adorned, and well furnished with pleasaunt histories and excellent nouelles, selected out of diuers good and commendable authors; by William Painter, Clarke of the Ordinaunce and Armarie.' In this book, according to the dedication of the translator to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, was set forth the great valiance of noble gentlemen, the terrible combats of courageous personages, the virtuous minds of noble dames, the chaste hearts of constant ladies, the wonderful patience of puissant princes, the mild sufferance of well-disposed gentlewomen, and, in divers, the quiet bearing of adverse fortune." Pleasant little apophthegms and short fables were there in that book, which the brothers and sisters of William Shakspere had heard him tell with marvellous spirit, and they abided therefore in their memories. There was

* Winter's Tale, Act II., Scene 1.

Æsop's fable of the old lark and her young ones, wherein "he prettily and aptly doth premonish that hope and confidence of things attempted by man ought to be fixed and trusted in none other but in himself." There was the story, most delightful to a child, of the bondman at Rome, who was brought into the open place upon which a great multitude looked, to fight with a lion of a marvellous bigness; and the fierce lion when he saw him "suddenly stood still, and afterwards by little and little, in gentle sort, he came unto the man as though he had known him," and licked his hands and legs; and the bondman told that he had healed in former time the wounded foot of the lion, and the beast became

his friend. These were for the younger children; but William had now a new tale, out of the same storehouse, upon which he had often pondered; the subject of which had shaped itself in his mind into dialogue that almost sounded like verse in his earnest and graceful recitation. It was a tale which Painter translated from the French of Pierre Boisteau—a true tale, as he records it, the memory whereof to this day is so well known at Verona, as unneths* their blubbered eyes be yet dry that saw and beheld that lamentable sight." It was 'The goodly history of the true and constant love between Romeo and Julietta.' Then the youth described how Romeo came into the hall of the Capulets, whose family were at variance with his own, the Montesches, and, "very shamefaced, withdrew himself into a corner;-but by reason of the light of the torches, which burned very bright, he was by and by known and looked upon by the whole company;" how he held the frozen hand of Juliet, the daughter of the Capulet, and it warmed and thrilled, so that from that moment there was love between them; how the lady was told that Romeo was the son of her father's capital enemy and deadly foe;" how, in the little street before her father's house, Juliet saw Romeo walking, "through the brightness of the moon;" how they were joined in holy marriage secretly by the good Friar Lawrence; and then came bloodshed, and grief, and the banishment of Romeo, and the friar gave the lady a drug to produce a pleasant sleep, which was like unto death ; and she," so humble, wise, and debonnaire," was laid "in the ordinary grave of the Capulets," as one dead, and Romeo, having bought poison of an apothecary, went to the tomb, and there lay down and died; and the sleeping wife awoke, and with the aid of the dagger of Romeo she died beside him. There were "blubbered eyes" also at that fireside of the Shaksperes, for the youth told the story with wonderful animation. From the same collection of tales had he before half dramatized the story of "Giletta of Narbonne," who cured the King of France of a painful malady, and the King gave her in marriage to the Count Beltramo, with whom she had been brought up, and her husband despised and forsook her, but at last they were united, and lived in great honour and felicity. There was another collection, too, which that youth had diligently read,--the 'Gesta Romanorum,' translated by R. Robinson in 1577,-old legends, come down to those latter days from monkish historians, who had embodied in their narratives all the wild traditions of the ancient and modern world. He could tell the story of the rich heiress who chose a husband by the machinery of a gold, a silver, and a leaden casket;-and another story of the merchant whose

* Unneths, scarcely.

Life.

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