were as common as now they are rare in literary society, he might
read more, and be helped in his reading. Any clever man might do as
much, not to speak of a man of genius. "And yet, alas, there is no
record or tradition of all this prodigious industry. . . . " I am
not speaking of "prodigious industry," and of that--at school. In a
region so non-literary as, by his account, was Stratford, Mr.
Greenwood ought not to expect traditions of Will's early reading
(even if he studied much more deeply than I have supposed) to exist,
from fifty to seventy years after Will was dead, in the memories of
the sons and grandsons of country people who cared for none of these
things. The thing is not reasonable. {62b}

Let me take one example {62c} of what Mr. E. A. Sonnenschein is
quoted as saying (somewhere) about Shakespeare's debt to Seneca's
then untranslated paper De Clementia (1, 3, 3; I, 7, 2; I, 6, I). It
inspires Portia's speech about Mercy. Here I give a version of the
Latin.

"Clemency becometh, of all men, none more than the King or chief
magistrate (principem) . . . No one can think of anything more
becoming to a ruler than clemency . . . which will be confessed the
fairer and more goodly in proportion as it is exhibited in the higher
office . . . But if the placable and just gods punish not instantly
with their thunderbolts the sins of the powerful, how much more just
it is that a man set over men should gently exercise his power.
What? Holds not he the place nearest to the gods, who, bearing
himself like the gods, is kind, and generous, and uses his power for
the better? . . . Think . . . what a lone desert and waste Rome
would be, were nothing left, and none, save such as a severe judge
would absolve."