THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE. 99 



would be to find one educated person who has not read 

 Shakspeare. 



There were travels and histories written, the great mari- 

 time discoveries of the age giving birth to this new class 

 of literature. Hakluyt's voyages were printed when Shaks- 

 peare was only twenty-five years of age, and even if he 

 read them he would not have learned much about serpents 

 there. Nor in Sir Walter Raleigh's histories either, which 

 were written chiefly during his prison life, he being liberated 

 the same year that saw the death of Shakspeare, 16 16. 



Many other well-known authors will occur to the reader, 

 to say nothing of the writers of the previous eras, the great 

 divines and scholars who wrote in Latin, and the many 

 English ballad-writers more likely to be perused by 'the 

 Bard.' 



As for natural history, it found no place on those shelves, 

 for as a science it did not as yet exist in England. Lord 

 Bacon, Shakspeare's celebrated contemporary, did make 

 some pretensions to be a naturalist ; but his Novum 

 Orgamivi was written in Latin, and we are not led to 

 believe that the poet enjoyed any very great educational 

 and classical advantages, having had 



'Small Latin and less Greek,' 



according to his friend and eulogist, Ben Jonson. 



And even if Shakspeare did read what was then the 

 Book of the period, Lord Bacon unfortunately fell into some 

 of the popular errors, or made very hazardous conjectures, 

 so far as natural history was understood ; and of him Dr. 

 Carpenter says, ' So far from contributing to our knowledge 



