(Fuller), with "small Latin and less Greek" (Jonson). They speak of
Shakespeare the author and actor; not yet had any man divided the
persons.

Elizabethan and Jacobean scholarly poets were widely read in the
classics. They were not usually, however, scholars in the same sense
as our modern scholarly poets and men of letters; such as Mr.
Swinburne among the dead, and Mr. Mackail and Sir Gilbert Murray--if
I may be pardoned for mentioning contemporary names. But Elizabethan
scholarly poets, and Milton, never regarded Shakespeare as learned.
Perhaps few modern men of letters who are scholars differ from them.
The opinion of Mr. Collins is to be discussed presently, but even he
thought Shakespeare's scholarship "inexact," as we shall see.

I conceive that Shakspere "knew Latin pretty well," and, on Ben
Jonson's evidence, he knew "less Greek." That he knew ANY Greek is
surprising. Apparently he did, to judge from Ben's words. My
attitude must, to the Baconians, seem frivolous, vexatious, and
evasive. I cannot pretend to know what was Shakspere's precise
amount of proficiency in Latin when he was writing the plays. That
between his own knowledge, and construes given to him, he might
easily get at the meaning of all the Latin, not yet translated, which
he certainly knew, I believe.

Mr. Greenwood says "the amount of reading which the lad Shakspere
must have done, and assimilated, during his brief sojourn at the Free
School is positively amazing." {62a} But I have shown how an
imaginative boy, with little or no access to English poetry and
romances, might continue to read Latin "for human pleasure" after he
left school. As a professional writer, in a London where Latinists