Of his school-days, unfortunately, no account whatsoever has come down to us; we are, therefore, unable to mark his gradual advancement, or to point out the early presages of future renown, which his extraordinary parts must have afforded; for as it has been observed by a great writer of our own time, all whose remarks on human life are sagacious and profound, 1772, David Davenport. In a paper without date of year, containing a list of contributors of certain sums as "a free and voluntary present to his Majesty, in pursuance to an act of parliament, and a commission thereupon issued, dated the 6th day of August last past;" signed by John Holbech, Rec. I find the name of " Benjamin Beddome Schoole-master;" but I know not to what period he ought to be referred: perhaps to the reign of Edward VI. immediately after William Dalam. During the years 1575, 1576, and part of 1577, in the chamberlain's accounts, from which, during those years, I derive my information, the annual stipend is only stated generally to have been made "to the schoolmaster" without specifying his name ; so that it is uncertain whether the office during that period was filled by Mr. Hunt or Mr. Jenkins, though from preceding and subsequent entries, it is certain that it was filled by one or the other of those gentlemen. Mr. Thomas Hunt, who had the honour to be one of our poet's school-masters, was buried at Stratford, April 12, 1612. Mr. Alexander Aspinhall, who was near forty years school-master of Stratford, and was chosen one of the burgesses, married Oct. 28, 1594, Anne, the sister of Julius Shaw, one of the witnesses to Shakspeare's will. William Dalam, the first person in the foregoing list, was one of the five priests of the guild of Stratford, as appears by an ancient deed, executed March 10, 35 Henry VIII. which is preserved among the archives of that corporation. The other four priests at that time were, Roger Egerton, Nicholas Coterel, John Payne, and Thomas Hakyns. "there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely related, that did not in every part of life discover the same proportion of intellectual vigour." Were our poet's early history accurately known, it would unquestionably furnish us with many proofs of the truth of this observation; of his acuteness, facility, and fluency; of the playfulness of his fancy, and his love of pleasantry and humour; of his curiosity, discernment, candour, and liberality; of all those qualities, in a word, which afterwards rendered him the admiration of the age in which he lived. How long he continued at school, or what proficiency he made there, we have now no means of ascertaining. I may, however, with the highest probability assume, that he acquired a competent, though perhaps not a profound knowledge, of the Latin language for why should it be supposed, that he who surpassed all mankind in his maturer years, made less proficiency than his fellows in his youth, while he had the benefit of instructors equally skilful? His friend Mr. Richard Quiney, one of the aldermen of Stratford in his time, who had certainly been bred some years before our poet, at the same school, his family having been long established in Stratford, was so well acquainted with that language, that his brother-in-law, Mr. Abraham Sturley, who was also an alderman, frequently intermixed long Latin paragraphs in his letters to him, several of which I have read; nay, on one occasion I have found an entire Latin letter addressed to him; and Mr. Sturley certainly would not have 2 Dr. Johnson's Life of Sydenham. 3 See Appendix. written what his brother could not understand. His eldest son too, Richard Quiney, who afterwards became a grocer in London, but returned finally to his native town, where he died in 1656, sent his father, whilst he was employed in the metropolis on the business of the corporation, a Latin letter, which, though it had been required as an exercise from his master, it would have been ridiculous to send to one who one who could not read it. In the school of Stratford, therefore, we have no reason to suppose that Shakspeare was outstripped by his contemporaries. Even Ben Jonson, who undoubtedly was inclined rather to depreciate than over-rate his rival's literary talents, allows, that he had some Latin. Dr. Farmer, indeed, has proved, by unanswerable arguments, that he was furnished by translations with most of those topicks which for half a century had been urged as indisputable proofs of his erudition. But though his Essay is decisive in this respect, it by no means proves that he had not acquired, at the school of Stratford, a moderate knowledge of Latin, though perhaps he never attained such a mas ♦ The writing of Latin letters to their fathers, appears to have been a common exercise enjoined to the scholars of Shakspeare's age. Thus in the Mastive, or Young Whelp of the Old Dogge [a collection of epigrams and satires], 4to. 1615, Signat. D. verso: "Who dares say Doltas speaketh barbarisme, "Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, by the Rev. Richard Farmer, B. D." 8vo. 1767. tery of that language as to read it without the occa sional aid of a dictionary. Like many other scholars who have not been thoroughly grounded in the ancient tongues, from desuetude in the progress of life, he probably found them daily more difficult; and hence, doubtless, indolence led him rather to English translations, than the original authors, of whose works he wished to avail himself in his dramatick compositions on which occasion he was certainly too careless minutely to examine whether particular passages were faithfully rendered or not. That such a mind as his was not idle or incurious, and that at this period of his life he perused several of the easier Latin classicks, cannot, I think, reasonably be doubted; though perhaps he never attained a facility of reading those authors with whom he had not been familiarly acquainted at school. From Lilly's Grammar, which we know furnished him with the rudiments of the Latin tongue, and a small manual, entitled Pueriles", See the Dedication prefixed to his Arthur Gorges' Translation of Lucan, by his son Carew Gorges, folio, 1614. I remember this sentence in my Pueriles, Voluntas ubi desunt vires, est laudanda, &c." From Peele's historical play of Edward I. 4to. 1593, if he did not intend a blunder, Pueriles and Cato's Moral Distichs should seem to have been the same book, with a double title: "It is an old sayde saying I remember I redde it in Catoes Pueriles, that cantabit vacuus," &c. But Drayton mentions them as different: "And when that once Pueriles I had read, "And newly had my Cato construed," &c. Epistle to Henry Reynolds, Esq. Tully's Offices was at that period a common school-book. "Whereunto (says Peacham) I might add Gyges' Ring and his [Tully's] Offices, which booke, let it not seeme contemptible and the Moral Distichs of Cato, he proceeded, as was the fashion of that age, after reading Tully's Offices, to the Eclogues of Baptista Mantuanus", and those of Virgil; and from thence, probably, to Cornelius Nepos, some parts of Ovid (whom he has cited in the Taming of the Shrew, and from whom he has taken the motto prefixed to his first publication), and finally, perhaps, to the Æneid of Virgil. Such I imagine was the progress, and the extent of his scholastick attainment. He needed not, however, as Dryden has well observed, "the spectacles of books" to read men; and I have no doubt, that even from his youth he was a curious and diligent observer of the manners and characters, not only of his young associates, but of all around him; a study in which, unquestionably, he took great delight, and pursued with avidity during the whole course of his future life. That his father was compelled by the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his son's assistance at home, to withdraw him from school, at least before unto you, because it lyeth tossed and torne in every schoole." Comp. Gent. 4to. 1622, p. 45. Lord Burghley, Peacham tells us, was so fond of Tully's Offices, that he always carried that book in his pocket. Drayton's Epistle, above quoted, furnishes us with the first poetry then put into the hands of learners; Mantuan, and the Eclogues of Virgil. For the method of teaching then adopted by school-masters, see Mount Tabor, or Private Exercises of a Penitent Sinner, 8vo. 1639, p. 10, by R. W. [i. e. R. Wallis,] Esq. The author was, like Shakspeare, born in 1564. 7 Of this author, then very popular, he has quoted the first line in Love's Labour's Lost. |