ashamed, of his deficiencies in classical literature; that he spent some time in a diligent application to those studies, and acquired the power of reading the Latin authors with facility. Latin composition, verses, and discourses, he probably regarded as sheer pedantry, dilettantism, a lamentable waste of useful time; as Biron says::

"Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books;" in Hamlet he says, Seneca is heavy and Plautus light, and gives in the character of Laertes a sly rap at the University man, who could only express his grief for his sister's loss by calling on Pelion and Olympus to fall upon him; his classical knowledge, or at least the display thereof, culminates in Love's Labour's Lost; although it again bursts forth in the first part of Henry VI, probably in consequence of Nash's spiteful epistle.

It has been said, that in the Two Gentlemen of Verona we see "the germ of other plays, or rather, the germ of some other of his most admired characters," so it may be said, that in Titus Andronicus we see the classical allusions of future works;-apart from the beautiful passages quoted by Mr. Knight in his valuable Notice on the Authenticity of Titus Andronicus, the following extracts may be adduced as not only additional evidence that Shakspere was the author, but that he also wrote the play, Dido and Eneas, referred to in Hamlet :

"To bid Æneas tell the tale twice o'er,

How Troy was burnt, and he made miserable?

"And I have read that Hecuba of Troy
Ran mad through sorrow."

"So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus,
When he by night lay bath'd in maiden blood."

"As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet.”

"As Tarquin erst

That left the camp to sin in Lucrece bed."
"Take this of me, Lucrece was not more chaste
Than this Lavinia, Bassianus' love."

The following lines are also Shaksperian :-

Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right." "Gracious Lavinia, Rome's rich ornament."

"Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful:

Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."

What, hast not thou full often struck a doe,
And borne her cleanly by the keeper's nose.'

"She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd;
She is a woman, therefore may
She is Lavinia, therefore must be lov'd."

be won;

"Oh! had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute,

And make the silken strings delight to kiss them."

The last two extracts may be compared with the following:

Suf.

"How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st, &c.,
Do I envy those jacks, that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand.”

Sonnet 130. "She's beautiful; and therefore to be woo'd; She is a woman; therefore to be won.”

Henry VI., act v., scene 3. Glo. "Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?"

Richard III.

What was Shakspere's occupation before going to London?

"Of Shakspere's actual occupations during these important years, when his character was formed, there is not a scintilla of contemporary proof." "Nay, notwithstanding the admonition to be found in his works, Throw physic to the dogs,' it has been gravely suggested, that he must have been initiated in medicine, from the minute inventory of the contents of the apothecary's shop in Romeo and Juliet.”—Shakspere's Legal Acquirements.

The gravity of the Bench relaxes into a smile, but it is not safe for a man living in a glass house to throw stones; -what says young Hamlet ?—

"I' faith they prove themselves sheepe and calves

That deale with them, or put their trust in them."

When I first entered upon the inquiry, "Had Shakspere

been a lawyer's clerk?" I commenced with Romeo and Juliet under the impression it was one of his earlier plays; and I cannot express my surprise, as the further I proceeded, the more strong became my conviction, he must, at some period or other, have studied medicine; for the whole play breathes of it-is instinct with the spirit thereof. But as it was written in 1591, it can be of no value as evidence, whether he studied medicine before or after settling in London. Let us, then, examine the first six plays with reference to this point, but in the reverse order, beginning with the last, and ending with "Shakspere's own muse his Pericles first bore."

In the Comedy of Errors there is but little physic, just sufficient to show the author was conversant with the subject. In Love's Labour's Lost, physic predominates over law. Armado's letter to the king is adduced by Lord Campbell as being "drawn up in the true lawyerlike tautological dialect;-no ordinary man could have hit it off so exactly without having engrossed in an attorney's office;" but the commencement of the letter hits off the medical language of the period just as accurately; "So it is beseiged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of the health-giving air, and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk." The first scene in the second act is full of medical jokes :

Moth. "A wonder, master; here's a Costard broken in the shin.

Cost.

Arm.

No salve, sir, but a plantain.

We will talk no more of this matter. Moth. Till there be more matter in the shin.

Arm.

Thou wer't immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

Cost.

True, true; and now you will give me my purgation, and let me loose."

In act fourth, scene sccond, we read:-Hol. "This is a gift that I have; simple, simple, a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motives, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and deliver'd upon the mellowing of occasion." It may be said, "no ordinary man could have hit it off so exactly without having" dissected in a school of medicine. Rosaline's advice to Biron is a medical lecture, and he replies, "I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital." It is very evident, that in this play, physic predominates over law. It should also be here mentioned, that the language of Armado is not very different from that of Andrew Borde, the physician, who, according to Hearne, gave rise to the name of Merry Andrew, the fool of the mountebank stage. His Breviary of Health, first printed in 1547, begins thus: "Egregious doctours and maysters of the eximious and archane science of physicke, of your urbanitie exasperate not your selve."-Pictorial Shakspere.

Hamlet is, like Romeo and Juliet, undeniably a medical production, and could only have been written by one who had studied the philosophy of medicine, particularly psychology; and whilst "the various expressions and allusions, which crop out, show the substratum of physic in the author's mind," and give to the play life and nature, the legal allusions and expressions are merely so many weeds, and the whole crop might be weeded out without injury, if not with benefit.