The father of this Bread Street lad was a scrivener by profession; that is, one who drafted legal papers; a well-to-do man as times went; able to give his boy some private schooling; proud of him, too; proud of his clear white and red face, and his curly auburn hair carefully parted--almost a girl’s face; so well-looking, indeed, that the father employed a good Dutch painter of those days to take his portrait; the portrait is still in existence--dating from 1618, when the poet was ten, showing him in a banded velvet doublet and a stiff vandyke collar, trimmed about with lace. In those times, or presently after, he used to go to St. Paul’s Grammar School; of which Lily, of Lily’s _Latin Grammar_, was the first master years before. It was only a little walk for him, through Cheapside, and then, perhaps, Paternoster Row--the school being under the shadow of that great cathedral, which was burned fifty years after. He studied hard there; studied at home, too; often, he says himself, when only fourteen, studying till twelve at night. He loved books, and he loved better to be foremost. He turns his hand to poetry even then. Would you like to see a bit of what he wrote at fifteen? Well, here it is, in a scrap of psalmody: “Let us blaze his name abroad, For of gods, he is the God, … Who by his wisdom did create The painted heavens so full of state, … And caused the golden tressèd sun All the day long his course to run, The hornèd moon to hang by night Amongst her spangled sisters bright; For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure.” It is not of the best, but I think will compare favorably with most that is written by young people of fifteen. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, whither he went shortly afterward--his father being hopeful that he would take orders in the Church--he was easily among the first; he wrote Latin hexameters, quarrelled with his tutor (notwithstanding his handsome face had given to him the mocking title of “The Lady”), had his season of _rustication_ up in London, sees all that is doing in theatrics thereabout, but goes back to study more closely than ever. The little Christmas song, “It was the winter wild, While the heaven-born Child,” etc., belongs to his Cambridge life; though his first public appearance as an author was in the “Ode to Shakespeare,” attaching with other and various commendatory verses to the second folio edition of that author’s dramas, published in the year 1632.