guild was the governing power of Stratford: and from that time it appears to have notably kept up the victualling points of the charter; for in the reign of Edward VI. it had accumulated a store of rich plate, such as garnishes the board when substantial burghers sit around. The reforming spirit of the age was opposed to this conviviality, and one of the young king's last acts was to dissolve the guild and raise Stratford into a corporation. The royal charter provides for the maintenance of the free grammar school, according to the original foundation, and vests the revenues held by the guild for that and other purposes in the new authorities, the high bailiff and burgesses of Stratford.

The school is on the skirt of the town, adjoining the alms-houses, and was formerly entered from the street by a gallery on the outside. But it is pretty certain that this was not the Alma Mater of Shakespeare; for the corporation books record that on the 18th of February, 1594-5, it was decided by the authorities that the school should no longer be kept in the chapel, an intimation that the chapel had been so appropriated up to that time. In fact, it is precisely the edifice in which the schools of the fifteenth century were established; and at Kingston-on-Thames, a free grammar school-founded, like that of Stratford, prior to the reign of Edward VI., but relicensed by that monarch, and afterwards revived by Elizabeth-is carried on in a similar building to the present day.

Memorable was the morning when young Will Shakespeare made his first bow in the grey old chapel-for it was even then grey and old; and the light came streaming through all the dozen windows on one terrible figure, a man most villanously cross-gartered, "like a pedant that keeps a school in the church." But we must not be deluded into supposing that he was allowed time to take observations.

Twelfth Night,' act iii. 2.

The discipline of the school was too practical, and a large swinging birch at the pedant's right hand was all that the eye noted. Solomon's idolatry of the rod had deeply infected our ancestors. Roger Ascham tells us that their schools were conducted on a system of terrorism surpassing belief. In the preface to The Schoolmaster,' he records a curious discussion on the subject at the table of the officers of the queen's household; and nothing could more clearly illustrate the practice of the time. Fear of impending punishment had excited some Eton boys to run away from school; and Lord Burleigh, on mentioning the circumstance, lamented that schoolmasters did not exercise more judgment in correction, declaring that they often punished the weakness of nature rather than the fault of the scholar. An educational Brutus, bearing the stern name of Pater, dissented from this view, contending that the source of all knowledge was the rod; and his opinion found a supporter in the severe Mr. Haddon, who maintained that the best schoolmaster was the greatest beater, "naming the person." This assertion drew a protest from Mr. Wotton, “a man,” we are informed, "mild of nature, with soft voice," who considered that more was to be done by moral suasion than by birch; and finally, Sir Richard Sackville told Roger apart, that he was often so punished when a boy by his schoolmaster, that the fear in which he lived prevented him from exercising his faculties, and the grandfather of the most brilliant man of his age grew up a dunce.

Shakespeare was evidently brought up by "great beaters," such as would have even won a character from Mr. Haddon, and we shall not be blamed for following his example in "naming the persons." The first was Thomas Hunt, curate of the adjacent hamlet of Luddington, and the second bore the unpoetic name of Jenkins. Their beating power is attested by Shakespeare's recollections of school, which

are all of the gloomiest kind, his most cheerful allusion being

With his shining morning face, and satchel on back,

Creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school."

This schoolboy is more dismal in the hands of Romeo, who says:

"Love goes towards love as schoolboys from their books;

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”

Grumio left the church where Petrucio married Katharina as willingly as e'er I came from school ;" and good Duke Humphrey speaks of—

"an effeminate prince,

Whom, like a schoolboy, you may overawe."3

Speed considers it a sign of love in Sir Valentine that he has learnt "to sigh like a schoolboy ;" and in another place we are told of “schoolboy's tears.'

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About forty years earlier, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the schoolmaster's throne was filled by the clerk of Stratford, who might have been found, like the clerk of _Chatham, "setting boys' copies," had he been visited by any Jack Cade of the day. The yearly salary of ten pounds received no addition from that time, while money had diminished in value; and, as mental acquirements commanded a price in the reign of Elizabeth, such a pittance could secure only inferior teachers. But they were still equal to "setting boys' copies," and on the satchel which the little scholar carried on his back he learnt to "cast accompt," while the injunction that every boy should be taught “grammar" was no doubt strictly observed. Shake

speare was the first of his family who could write his name, and he gives us convincing proof in his plays, excepting those laid on English ground, that he would not have passed a Civil Service Examination in geography, though he was not more backward on this point than Napoleon and Marlborough in spelling. The round of instruction at Stratford was confined to "small Latin and less Greek," which Ben Jonson pronounced the extent of Shakespeare's acquirements; and Laneham, in his celebrated letter from "Killingworth Castle," describes his education at the higher public school of St. Paul's as not exceeding this limit.'

But Shakespeare has himself given an inkling of the standard of instruction at a provincial grammar-school, and of the mode in which it was imparted. As Walter Scott presented his schoolmaster in one of his novels, so the great dramatist seems to us to bring his early teacher on the stage. It will, we know, be pronounced heretical to avow such an opinion; for as no author ever looked at human nature with the same sweeping eye, Shakespeare is believed to have never coloured his creations with personal reminiscences. But it is time to dismiss this superstition; for Aubrey has introduced us to the original of Dogberry, and in a later chapter, we shall establish the hitherto dubious identity of Justice Shallow.

It is in the play which Shakespeare has tinged deepest with his own experiences, and where he brings forward all his old neighbours, that we make the acquaintance of the Welsh schoolmaster, Sir Hugh Evans, who is also in holy orders, and, like Thomas Hunt of Luddington, a curate. Hunt is suggestive of Hugh, and it is not improbable that

1 "I went to school, forsooth, both at Paul's and also at St. Anthony's: In the fifth form, passed Æsop's Fables,' I wis.; and Terence, vos istæc intro auferte, and began with 'my Virgil, Tityre tu patulæ. I conned my rules, could construe and parse with the best of them."-Burn's Reprint, p. 91.

Thomas Hunt was a Welshman; for not only is the name common in Wales, but several natives of the principality were settled at Stratford, and two were actually of the tribe of Evans; for the parochial register records the burial of Evans Rice and Evans Meredith. A Welshman, named Lewis ap Williams, was an alderman at the same time as John Shakespeare. The poet, therefore, in his younger days, often heard him speak, and hence that familiarity with the Welsh pronunciation so humorously exhibited in Evans and Fluellin. The very name of Fluellin occurs in the parochial register of Stratford ;' and, indeed, many of Shakespeare's characters take their names from his fellow-townsmen.

Sir Hugh Evans brings under notice one of his pupils, who is put through his accidence; and Shakespeare seems to have designed this incident expressly to indicate his schoolmaster; for not only is it foreign to the piece, which argues a special object, but the boy's name is WILLIAM. Sir Hugh is not exhibited in an odious light like Holofernes, but retains the traits of the type; for he seeks to create an impression of his learning by precisely the same means, always aiming at grand words, which he mispronounces and misapplies. As he confesses himself "full of cholers," and, little William, when called up for examination, approaches in the Romeo style, "with heavy looks," it is clear that he was a good beater. Hence we feel no surprise at the complaint of Mistress Page:-"Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in the world at his book."2

Dead languages offer no attraction to a boy of high sensibility and quick intellect; and Walter Scott, like Shakespeare, acquired "small Latin and less Greek." 3

1 The register records the burial of William Fluellin on the 9th of July,

1595.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor,' act iv. 1.

3 Sir Walter Scott, in his autobiographical fragment, says that he could not repeat the Greek alphabet.