battle-field, or stately ecclesiastical edifice, inspiring a respectful reverence not untouched with awe. He was twelve years old when Elizabeth made her celebrated visit to the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth. The series of princely entertainments with which the aspiring courtier welcomed his sovereign attracted the whole surrounding district, and no doubt Stratford, which was only a few miles off, sent its entire population to testify their admiration and loyalty. It is more than probable that Shakespeare was one of the spectators, and that his imagination may have been there for the first time fired with a love of gorgeous spectacle, and all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of that great pageantry.

There was a good grammar or free school at Stratford in Shakespeare's time. It had been founded in the reign of Henry VI., and had been patronized by Edward IV. We may take it for granted that the poet attended that school, since he certainly lived at Stratford till after his marriage, and there is no trace of his ever having been at any other seminary. The education which the school afforded was not solely rudimental, but extended to the classical languages. The more advanced scholars were afforded an opportunity of becoming familiar with such authors as Terence, Sallust, Cicero, Pliny, Horace, and Virgil. How many years Shakespeare attended this school we do not know, nor what figure he made at it. But we do know that he had a quick and ready wit, a keen

perception, and an admirable faculty in the acquisition of knowledge. Admitting, therefore, as some have surmised, that all his schooling took place between his eighth and his sixteenth years, that was time enough for a youth of his capacity to acquire a large if not a profound stock of learning. Shakespeare's first poems, the "Venus and Adonis," the "Lucrece," and the "Passionate Pilgrim" evince strong classical predilections; and no one could have written them who had not drunk at the fountain of the Greek and Latin authors. His plays are full of classical allusions and illustrations. "Troilus and Cressida" possesses Homeric touches; "Coriolanus" and "Julius Cæsar" have all the fire of the grandest of the Roman poets, historians, and orators; "Love's Labour's Lost," one of his earliest comedies, breathes throughout of the youthful scholar; and the "Comedy of Errors" is founded, even to minute details, on the "Menæchmi" of Plautus. If Shakespeare was not, even when a very young man, "a scholar, and a ripe one," he was at least one who had profited much by the instructions of faithful teachers. What his ultimate attainments as a linguist were is not perhaps a matter of great consequence, because he had that within him which raised him as much above the mere linguist as he is above the beast that perishes. When Ben Jonson, who piqued himself upon his scholarship, said that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek," he inferentially admitted that he had some of both. Rowe men

tions, in his Life of Shakespeare, that in a conversation which took place on one occasion between Jonson and Sir John Suckling the latter said, most truly, that "if Jonson would produce any one topic finely treated by any of the ancients, he (Suckling) would undertake to show something upon the same subject, at least as well written, by Shakespeare." Mr. Capel Lofft, in the Introduction to his work entitled Aphorisms from Shakespeare, makes the following noteworthy observations :-"If it were asked from what sources Shakespeare drew those abundant streams of wisdom, carrying with their current the fairest and most unfading flowers of poetry, I should be tempted to say he had what would be now considered a very reasonable portion of Latin; he was not wholly ignorant of Greek; he had a knowledge of the French, so as to read it with ease; and, I believe, not less of the Italian. He was habitually conversant in the chronicles of his country. He lived with wise and highly cultivated men; with Jonson, Essex, and Southampton in familiar friendship. He had deeply imbibed the Scriptures; and his own most acute, profound, active, and original genius (for there never was a truly great poet nor an aphoristic writer of excellence without these accompanying qualities) must take the lead in the solution." Pope, in the valuable Preface to his edition of Shakespeare, gives expression to similar sentiments. "There is a vast difference," he says, "between learning and languages. How far Shakespeare was ignorant of the

latter I cannot determine; but it is plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning: nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another. Nothing is more evident than that he had a taste of natural philosophy, mechanics, ancient and modern history, poetical learning, and mythology; and that he was very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity."

Learning and the classics were much cultivated in Queen Elizabeth's reign, she herself setting an example of predilection for them. Previously these studies had been mainly confined to the clergy and a few scholars by profession; but now a general enthusiasm sprang up in the cause of letters. The Queen, with the aid of her tutor, Roger Ascham, wrote a Commentary on Plato, and translated from the Greek two of the Orations of Isocrates, a Play of Euripides, and portions of Xenophon and Plutarch; and from the Latin, Sallust's History of the Jugurthine War, Horace's De Arte Poetica, Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophic, and several of Cicero's and Seneca's Epistles. She was also the founder of Westminster School, and of Jesus College, Oxford; whilst her successor James, who loved to be called the British Solomon, following the laudable example of his predecessor, called the University of Edinburgh into existence. The whole court circle, both male and female, and the upper classes generally, felt themselves constrained to follow in the wake of royalty; and the erudition which diffused itself

during Elizabeth's reign deepened into pedantry in that of James. About this time also, and even a little earlier, the modern languages-Spanish, French, and Italian came much into vogue. Italian, in particular, was so much affected that the devotion to it almost rivalled the classical mania of the day. Wyatt and Surrey took Petrarch for their model; and Sir Philip Sidney, who died in the year that Shakespeare went to London, and who may be said to have introduced pastoral poetry into England, was, in his " Arcadia," an open imitator of Sannazaro. Most of the lyric poems of the time are tinctured with an Italian style. It is traceable in several of Shakespeare's miscellaneous pieces, and particularly in the subtleties and ingenuities with which his Sonnets abound. His acquaintance with the stores of Italian fiction supplied him with the plots of some of his finest plays; and Italy may well be proud of our great bard's ardent attachment to her soil, and just appreciation of her national and individual character.

As yet, however, he was but a school-boy at Stratford, on whose young life some shadow was about to fall. His father's fortunes declined. The cause has not been ascertained, but the fact seems indisputable. His property was mortgaged; debt pressed upon him; he withdrew from his municipal honours; and the general belief seems to be that, finding himself in straitened circumstances, he took his son William from school about the year 1580, and apprenticed him to his own business. But