1 1 6 Shakspeai'e 



so humbly employed.* Another conjecture is 

 that he was employed in an attorney's office, for 

 it was possibly at Shakspeare that the angry snarl 

 of Thomas Nash in 1589 was aimed when he 

 sneered at those who leave the trade of Noverint 

 (the technical beginning of a bond) and busy 

 themselves with the endeavours of art. If that 

 were so, his work in the office might account for 

 the easy use which he freely makes of legal 

 technical terms in his plays. f After all, he most 

 likely had more places than one between leaving 



* If there is no positive evidence either for or against a 

 traditional story, it is not to be forthwith rejected as false. 

 When nothing certain is known of the circumstances of its 

 origin and growth, its mere existence, although worth very 

 little as proof, is, after all, the only evidence there is — evidence, 

 at any rate, of what somebody thought probable and others 

 easily believed. An anecdote may be essentially true although 

 not circumstantially accurate ; and many absurdities of human 

 thought, custom and action in all parts of the earth demon- 

 strate the vital fixity of tradition from generation to generation. 



t Not that he possessed so accurate a knowledge of law as 

 the undiscriminating commentator somewhat rashly proclaims 

 when he speaks of his "minute and undeviating accuracy" in 

 his references to legal matters. He was sometimes wrong in 

 his law as he was wrong in his chronology, wrong in his geo- 

 graphy, wrong in his history, wrong in his physiology, wrong 

 in his medical psychology, wrong in various details of his com- 

 prehensive expositions. Wrong in details, no doubt, but true 

 to the principles and essences of men and of things. He knew 

 how to make wrong details teach more truth than heaps of 

 right details by prosaic writers can ever teach. 



