At the age of fourteen Shakespeare left school to assist his father, who at this time had met with some business reverses, and we have little or no record of his life until his nineteenth year when, in the autumn of 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a substantial yeoman of Shottery, the village adjoining Stratford. The baptism of his daughter Susanna is next recorded on May 26, 1583; and that of a son Hamnet and a daughter, Judith (twins), on Feb. 2, 1585. His departure for London followed, probably in 1586. Of Shakespeare’s migration to London and his life in that city I do not propose to speak here, but from the foregoing facts, it will be seen that Shakespeare came of a good family, enjoyed in his infancy tender parental care, and received the rudiments of a sound and substantial education at a period of his life when the youthful mind is most receptive. To an intelligent observer the influences and experiences of his youth are clearly reflected in the work of his later years. A mere cursory reading of the plays will show his intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, probably begun at his mother’s knee and continued in his leisure hours—the Bible being one of the few books within his reach at that time. In the pastoral scenes we cannot but marvel at the knowledge he displays of forestry, botany, the flora of the fields and woods, and the nature and habits of the animals, birds and insects. It requires but a slight stretch of imagination to see young Shakespeare as a sturdy country lad strolling with his youthful companions by the side of the gentle Avon. Noting the flight of the swallow over its glassy surface, the nodding reeds and grasses on its sedgy banks, and dart of the startled pickerel from its weedy lair, unconsciously absorbing by his yet undeveloped genius of observation the minute knowledge of nature that is so perfectly displayed in “As You Like It” and other silvan plays. We see him wandering through the meadows listening to the lark rising with its morning song on high; by the little gardens where the primrose, the cowslip and the yellow daffodil grow round the cottage door, and the ivy and the honeysuckle climb the rustic porch; in the green lanes between the quickset hedges where the modest violets lift their purple heads upon the mossy banks. May not the youthful Shakespeare himself have seen in the woods of Charlecote or Shottery “the poor sequestered stag that from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt” augment with his tears the already swollen stream, and himself startled the timid hare and the antlered deer from their leafy coverts, and in those majestic solitudes found “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything?”