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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 Quincy, 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 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 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 Janson, 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 mastery of that language as to read it without the occasional 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, reason-ably 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, and the Moral Distichs of Cato, he proceeded, as was the fashion of that age, after reading TuIly'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 Aeneid 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
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