1898.J on the Early Life and Work of Shakespeare. 747 



Naso —surest token with Shakespeare of afifectionate familiarity; "Why 

 indeed ' Naso ' but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, 

 the jerks of invention ? " The extent to which Shakespeare had steeped 

 himself in Ovid was noticed by his contemporaries. Meres wrote 

 in 1598 : " As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in 

 Pythagoras so the witty soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and 

 honey-tongued Shakespeare." 



The classical learning displayed by Shakespeare was precisely 

 what a clever boy might be expected to carry away from the free 

 grammar-school at Stratford. Thus Coleridge's conclusion appears 

 to be a just one ; " Though Shakespeare's acquirements in the dead 

 languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned educa- 

 tion, his habits had nevertheless been scholastic, and those of a 

 student." 



This conclusion agrees exactly with the testimony of a competent 

 and trustworthy witness, so precisely in point that one is disposed to 

 ask, why it was ever thought needful to resort to speculation and to 

 expert evidence. If, indeed, the question of Shakespeare's classical 

 learning had to be decided in accordance with the opinions of learned 

 experts, we might well despair of arriving at a conclusion. According 

 to critics like Whalley and Upton, he was a kind of poetic Porson, 

 with head so crammed with Greek that he cannot say of valour that 

 it " most dignifies the haver," without the Greek word eyjtv being 

 present to his mind. Between this extreme, and Farmer's conclusion 

 that " his studies were most demonstratingly confined to nature and 

 his own language," you may find every possible form of intermediate 

 belief. I do not know a better illumination of the value of mere 

 opinion and expert evidence, in matters of criticism. 



There is no such ambiguity about the testimony of Ben Jonson. 

 When he wrote of Shakespeare that he had " small Latin and less 

 Greek," we feel sure that Shakespeare was criticised as a classical 

 scholar by one who regarded himself as being, in this particular, his 

 superior. If I were to hear it said of one unknown to me that he 

 knew little law and less equity, I should conclude that the subject 

 of the conversation was certainly not a layman, but probably a judge, 

 or at all events some one who had made a special study of law. 

 And if I knew the speaker to be a censorious man, with a good 

 opinion of his own attainments, I should consider it likely that the 

 man of whom he spoke was a fair lawyer, though probably more 

 eminent in other respects. 



Now the great, and, on the whole, generous, nature of Jonson, was 

 infected with a double dose of " the scholar's melancholy, which is 

 emulation." His love for Shakespeare, he tells us, and I have no 

 doubt truly, approached to idolatry. And yet in the very passage in 

 which he records his affectionate admiration, he does not hesitate to 

 note what he regarded as defects, and he sums up, in words which 

 sound strangely in our ears : " He redeemed his vices with his virtues. 

 There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." 



