on, in the narrower sense, we can really make sure of
little; but, like that of Burns, it was indisputably far more liberal
than the devotees of miracle are wishful to suppose. To-day no competent
inquirer doubts that, with the grammar-school at Stratford opening its
doors free to the son of John Shakespeare, burgess and alderman, the
opportunity was grasped by that struggling but ambitious person. Nor is
it doubted that there, under some Holofernes or Sir Hugh Evans, the boy
learned his Lyly's grammar, and read his share of Latin authors--his
Terence, Ovid, and Seneca, together with Baptista "the old Mantuan." In
French he assuredly did more than dabble, if his _Henry V_ be taken as
any proof. The other day Mr. Churton Collins essayed to prove, by an
array of quotations, that he was tolerably read in Greek. For my own
part I confess that I find, in the passages of AEschylus cited with
passages of Shakespeare, no more than happy coincidences in the
thinking of two kindred original minds. Yet some Greek at least he had.
Our witness is Ben Jonson. Rare Ben was himself a monument of learning,
and to him the ordinary mortal's modicum was but a trifle. When he
observes "and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek," we should
do well to take him as meaning precisely what he says. If he had meant
"no Latin and no Greek," he would have written it so; the line would
have scanned as easily, and the desired point would have been made still
more effective. Add to these studies of Shakespeare his early study in
the Bible; early familiarity with that book, apart from all questions of
character and religion, will always shoot a rich woof of word and
thought through all the warp of writing.

Remember that Shakespeare at school was not distracted by hours of
mathematics and other agreeable but alien pursuits. Remember also--what
is so strangely forgotten--that he was a genius, whose capacious mind
would grasp and retain with unique facility. Remember that at school
there are boys and boys, and that, while some of them waste time in
laboriously endeavouring to assimilate the shells of knowledge along
with the oysters, others instinctively use their powers of secretion to
better purpose. Remember also that in Elizabethan times school-boy study
was a far more strenuous matter than it is in these degenerate days, and
that it was not chiefly directed towards examinations.

Be assured that Shakespeare's school education was as good as yo