Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetuo una dormienda.

Where is the parallel? It is got by translating Catullus thus:--

The LIGHTS of heaven go out and return;
When once our BRIEF CANDLE goes out,
One night is to be perpetually slept.

But soles are not 'lights,' and brevis lux is not 'brief candle.'
If they were, the passages have no resemblance. 'To be, or not to
be,' is 'taken almost verbatim from Plato.' Mr. Donnelly says that
Mr. Follett says that the Messrs. Langhorne say so. But, where is
the passage in Plato?

Such are the proofs by which men ignorant of the classics prove that
the author of the poems attributed to Shakespeare was a classical
scholar. In fact, he probably had a 'practicable' knowledge of
Latin, such as a person of his ability might pick up at school, and
increase by casual study: points to which we return. For the rest,
classical lore had filtered into contemporary literature and
translations, such as North's Plutarch.

As to modern languages, Mr. Donnelly decides that Shakespeare knew
Danish, because he must have read Saxo Grammaticus 'in the original
tongue'--which, of course, is NOT Danish! Saxo was done out of the
Latin into French. Thus Shakespeare is not exactly proved to have
been a Danish scholar. There is no difficulty in supposing that 'a
clayver man,' living among wits, could pick up French and Italian
sufficient for his uses. But extremely stupid people are naturally