his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting "a wide
familiarity with the classics," or "remarkable classical
attainments." The thing is wholly impossible.

I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare
speaks of him as "learned," erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The
epithets for him are "sweet," "gentle," "honeyed," "sugared," "honey-
tongued"--this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton,
who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote
L'Allegro just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare "sweetest
Shakespeare, Fancy's child," with "native wood-notes wild"; and gives
to Jonson "the LEARNED sock." Fuller, like Milton, was born eight
years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton
he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare's works
appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It
would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as
far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among
lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller's
remark that Shakespeare's "learning was very little," that, if alive,
he would confess himself "to be never any scholar." {151a} I cannot
grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men
of Shakespeare's generation, such as Jonson, did not think him
learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins's view
be correct, the men of Shakespeare's and of Milton's generations were
too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the
literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was
too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.