the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk,
and lawyer-ways--and if Shakespeare was possessed of the
infinitely-divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, how
did he get it, and WHERE, and WHEN?

"From books."

From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings
of the champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me
to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and
comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he has
not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and
cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and
the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-form,
the reader who has served that trade will know the writer HASN'T.
Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to
correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-masonries of
any trade by careful reading and studying. But when I got him to
read again the passage from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he
perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student a
bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly
that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and
make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It
was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was
happening: he was losing his temper. And I knew he would
presently close the session with the same old argument that was
always his stay and his support in time of need; the same old
argument, the one I couldn't answer--because I dasn't: the
argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it,
and I obeyed.