376 A Century of Science 



In cities of such size, everybody of the slightest 

 eminence is known all over town, and such persons 

 are sure to be more or less acquainted with one an- 

 other ; it is a very rare exception when it is not so. 

 Before his thirtieth year, Shakespeare was well 

 known in London as an actor, a writer of plays, 

 and the manager of a prominent theatre. It was 

 in that year that Spenser, in his " Colin Clout 's 

 Come Home Again," alluding to Shakespeare 

 under the name of Action, or " eagle-like," paid 

 him this compliment : 



" And there, though last, not least, is Action ; 



A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found ; 

 Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, 

 Doth, like himself, heroically sound." 



Four years after this, in 1598, Francis Meres pub- 

 lished his book entitled " Palladis Tamia," a very 

 interesting contribution to literary history. The 

 author, who had been an instructor in rhetoric in 

 the University of Oxford, was then living in Lon- 

 don, near the Globe Theatre. In this book Meres 

 tells his readers that " the sweet witty soul of Ovid 

 lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare ; 

 witness his ' Venus and Adonis,' his ' Lucrece,' his 

 sugared sonnets among his private friends, etc. . . . 

 As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for 

 comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shake- 



