fication of a line in Terence.

4

Be it so, as far as the Grainmar goes. The memory of his school-lessons might have been stronger than that of his later acquire. ments. He might have quoted Lilly, and yet have read Terence. This, however, is not the place for the opening of the questio vexata of Shakspere's learning. To the grammar-school, then, with some preparation, we hold that William Shakspere goes, in the year 1571. His father is at this time, as we have said, chief alderman of his town; he is a gentleman, now, of repute and authority; he is Master John Shakspere; and assuredly the worthy curate of the neighbouring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the schoolmaster, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his "shining morning face" first passed out of the main street into that old courtthrough which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would. be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first in-. structor has left no memorials of his talents or his acquirements; and in a few years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honour be to them; for it is impossible to imagine that the; teachers of William Shakspere were evil instructors-giving the boy husks instead of wholesome aliment. They could not have been harsh and perverse structors, for such spoil the gentlest natures, and his was always gentle :-" My gentle Shakspere" is he called by a rough but noble spirit-one in whom was all honesty and genial friendship under a rude exterior. His wondrous abilities could not be spoiled even by ignorant instructors.

In the seventh year of the reign of Edward VI. a royal charter was granted to Stratford for the incorporation of the inhabitants. That charter recites-"That the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon was an ancient borough, in which a certain guild was theretofore founded, and endowed with divers lands, tenements, and possessions, out of the rents, revenues, and profits whereof a certain free grammar-school for the education of boys there was made and supported."* The charter further recites the other public objects to which the property of the guild had been applied ;-that it was dissolved; and that its possessions had come into the hands of the king. The charter of incorporation then grants to the bailiff and burgesses certain properties which were parcel of the possessions of the guild, for the general charges of the borough, for the maintenance of an ancient almshouse, "and that the free grammar-school for the instruction and education of boys and youth there should be thereafter kept up and maintained as theretofore it used to be." It may be doubted whether Stratford was benefited by the dissolution of its guild. We see that its grammar-school was an ancient establishment: it was not a creation of the charter of Edward VI., although it is popularly called one of the grammar-schools of that king, and was the last school established by him.† The people of Stratford had possessed the advantage of a school for instruction in Greek and Latin, which is the distinct object of a grammar-school, from the time of Edward IV., when Thomas Jolyffe, in 1482, "granted to the guild of the Holy Cross of Stratford-upon-Avon

• Report of the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities. † See Strype's 'Memo: ials.'

all his lands and tenements in Stratford and Dodwell, in the county of Warwick, upon condition that the master, aldermen, and proctors of the said guild should find a priest, fit and able in knowledge, to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to the school in the said town to him, taking nothing of the scholars for their teaching."* Dugdale describes the origin of guilds, speaking of this of Stratford :-" Such meetings were at first used by a mutual agreement of friends and neighbours, and particular licenses granted to them for conferring lands or rents to defray their public charges in respect that, by the statute of mortmain, such gifts would otherwise have been forfeited."

In the surveys of Henry VIII., previous to the dissolution of religious houses, there were four salaried priests belonging to the guild of Stratford, with a clerk, who was also schoolmaster, at a salary of ten pounds per annum.† They were a hospitable body these guild-folk, for there was an annual feast, to which all the fraternity resorted, with their tenants and farmers; and an inventory of their goods in the 15th of Edward IV. shows that they were rich in plate for the service of the table, as well as of the chapel. That chapel was partly rebuilt by the great benefactor of Stratford, Sir Hugh Clopton; and after the dissolution of the guild, and the establishment of the grammar-school by the charter of Edward VI., the school was in all probability kept within it. There is an entry in the Corporation books, of February 18, 1594-5-" At this hall it was agreed by the bailiff and the greater number of the company now present that there shall be no school kept in the chapel from this time following." In associating, therefore, the schoolboy days of William Shakspere with the Free

Grammar-School of Stratford, we cannot with any certainty imagine him engaged in his daily tasks in the ancient room which is now the school-room. And yet the use of the chapel as a school, discontinued in 1595, might only have been a temporary use. A little space may be occupied in a notice of each building.

The grammar-school is now an ancient room over the old town-hall of Stratford;-both, no doubt, offices of the ancient guild. We enter from the street into a court, of which one side is formed by the chapel of the Holy Cross. Opposite the chapel is a staircase, ascending which we are in a plain room, with a ceiling. But it is evident that this work of plaster is modern, and that above it we have the oak roof of the sixteenth century. In this room are a few forms and a rude antique desk.

The Chapel of the Guild is in great part a very perfect specimen of the plainer ecclesiastical architecture of the reign of Henry VII. :-a building of just proportions and some ornament, but not rurning into elaborate decoration. The engraving below exhibits its street-front, showing the grammar school beyond.

The interior now presents nothing very remarkable. But upon a general repair of the Chapel in 1804, beneath the whitewash of successive generations was discovered a series of most remarkable paintings, some in that portion of the building erected by Sir Hugh Clopton, and others in the far more ancient Chancel. A very elaborate series of coloured engravings has been published from these paintings, from drawings made at the time of their discovery by

Mr. Thomas Fisher. There can be little doubt, from the defacement of some of the paintings, that they were partially destroyed by violence, and, all attempted to be obliterated in the progress of the Reformation. But that outbreak of zeal did not belong to the first periods of religious change; and it is most probable that these paintings were existing in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. When the five priests of the guild were driven from their home and their means of maintenance, the chapel no doubt ceased to be a place of worship; and it probably became the school-room, after the foundation of the grammar-school, distinct from the guild, under the charter of Edward VI. If it was the schoolroom of William Shakspere, those rude paintings must have produced a powerful effect upon his imagination.. Many of them in the ancient Chancel constituted a pictorial romance-the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the Creation of the World to its rescue from the Pagan Cosdroy, King of Persia, by the Christian King, Heraclius;-and its final Exaltation at Jerusalem,-the anniversary of which event was celebrated at Stratford at its annual fair, held on the 14th of September. There were other pictures of Saints, and Martyrdoms; and one, especially, of the murder of Thomas à Becket, which exhibits great force. without that grotesqueness which generally belongs to our early paintings.

There were fearful pictures, too, of the last Judgment; with the Seven Deadly Sins visibly portrayed, -the punishments of the evil, the rewards of the just. Surrounded as he was with the memorials of the old religion-with great changes on every side, but still very recent changes-how impossible was it that Shakspere should not have been thoroughly imbued with a knowledge of all that pertained to the faith of his ancestors! One of the most philosophical writers of our day has said that Catholicism gave us Shakspere.* Not so, entirely. Shakspere belonged to the transition period, or he could not have been quite what he was. His intellect was not the dwarfish and precocious growth of the hot-bed of change, and still less of convulsion. His whole soul was permeated with the ancient vitalities-the things which the changes of institutions could not touch; but it could bourgeon under the new influences, and blend the past and the present, as the "giant oak" of five hundred winters is covered with the foliage of one spring.t

Carlyle-'French Revolution.

+ The foundation scholars of this grammar-school at present receive a complete classical edu cation, so as to fit them for the university.-(Report of Commissioners.)