guessed, that here was the forerunner of Hamlet. If he read the poem to any of his acquaintance in Stratford, he probably got the reverse of encouragement to go on in the new path he had opened, except from his mother, whose intuition and maternal instinct and partiality would have made her scent in many of these luxuriant stanzas something more lasting than a youthful nosegay of fancy's flow

ers.

As the record of Shakespeare's life from birth to marriage, in his nineteenth year, is a blank, whether or not his boyhood foretokened any high performance we know not. Grateful as it were to have of him what we have of Wordsworth, of Coleridge, of Goethe, a complete biographical report, we can console ourselves with the reflection that, although "the child is father of the man," the poet child is not much different from other children, and that only when a Hyperion, or an Adonais, or an Ode on Intimations of Immortality comes before them, do the class-mates and contemporaries of the poet perceive and realize (and that only in part) the vast difference between themselves and him who had been their boyish companion. The soul, while laying the

foundations of greatness, keeps its own counsel; and what it had been doing and preparing is only revealed by the completed work. The Tempest, and Lear, and Julius Cæsar tell us, and tell us with the peal of resounding clarions, that Shakespeare was a wonderful child, and from them, and only from them, can this be learnt; so that we now know about the child William what his own father and mother had no inkling of.

Looking back upon the boy William from heights so resplendently illuminated by lights enkindled by himself, we have the privilege of perceiving in him traits, movements, not observed by his contemporaries; of discovering signs, of interpreting tones, unnoted by those, even, to whom he was dearest. By this fargleaming light we behold the open-eyed boy slipping from his mother's lap to start, as all children do, on unending voyages of discovery, led and spurred by hope and curiosity, the delighted heir to a world of sparkling novelties; handling, questioning, more intently than other children do, everything; eagerly exploring the paths and by-ways of new beauty and knowledge; quickly dropping what soon gets to be old to grasp the new, his big eyes ever alight

with wonder and intelligence.

Are we not

entitled to believe that of this eager boy William, who was to become SHAKESPEARE, in the spontaneous, joyous feeding of the crescent faculties, the assimilations were more perfect, the transmutations of phenomena into knowledge more quickening, than in his playmates? The life of healthy childhood is a perpetual dawn, watching for sunrise. We cannot but think that in his watching the hope was more deep and radiant, the curiosity more enlivening. And may we not be permitted to catch a glimpse of him in one of those blissful premonitory moments, overflowing with vitality, when in his seventh or eighth year he would pause in his play or his ramble, the visible world suddenly shut out, the light thrown upon it by his senses swallowed up in an inward flash from the soul that flooded his brain with the glow of premature thought, startling him into ecstasy with its new power and mysterious whisper ?

t;

Stratford on Avon enjoyed a not common privilege it had a free grammar-school. Of course, William Shakespeare was sent to it he was a bright boy, and his father was one of the principal citizens of Stratford. In 1571,

when William was in his eighth year, John Shakespeare was elected first alderman; this placed him at the head of the municipal government. A quick boy, at a grammar-school of higher class, say from his eleventh to his fourteenth year, — will learn and pick up much. A susceptible nature takes in as well by absorption as by direct appropriation. Happy, if little poison is absorbed. In a small country town of England, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the tone and influence of a school of this class would be healthy. Besides, from the brain of the boy who was to become Shakespeare would, through his native mental vigor and affluence, flow forth magnetic currents to meet and neutralize defiling invasions from without.

From the known fact that John Shakespeare's embarrassments obliged him to mortgage the estate of Ashbies in 1578, it is inferred that William was withdrawn from school, probably, so early as his fourteenth year, to assist his father in business. This inference is supported by tradition; and tradition, although never to be entirely trusted, has always some value. For one who was to be a world-poet this early apprenticeship to practical out-door

and in-door work was good discipline. How long it lasted no documents have yet been discovered to make known. Tradition says

and quite probably with truth-that for a while he was teacher in a school. His quick acquirement when himself a scholar would qualify him for this duty. Tradition likewise reports that he was, for a time, in a lawyer's office.

With his prompt apprehensiveness, and with the unresting mental activity implied in the production, during only thirty years, of what he produced, Shakespeare would easily seize and retain many professional phrases and facts; so that, to account for the numerous illustrations scattered through his pages, drawn from the professions, it is not necessary to suppose that he had been a lawyer and a doctor and a sailor and a farmer. But the fact that in the two poems written in his youth, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, illustrations taken from law forms and practices are frequent is circumstantial evidence, almost decisive, that he was for a year or two a student of law. These two poems were written before he went to London. That a young man should draw so many similes from the routine of a calling