In reference to the observations of A. E. B., I beg leave to say that, in speaking of Shakspeare as a man who had _small Latin_, I intended no irreverence to his genius. I am no worshipper of Shakspeare, or of any man; but I am willing to do full justice, and to pay all due veneration, to those powers which, with little aid from education, exalted their possessor to the heights of dramatic excellence. As to the extent of Shakspeare's knowledge of Latin, I think that it was well estimated by Johnson, when he said that "Shakspeare had Latin enough to grammaticize his English." Had he possessed much more than was sufficient for this purpose, Ben Jonson would hardly have called his knowledge of the language _small_; for about the signification of _small_ there can be no doubt, or about Ben's ability to determine whether it was small or not. But this consideration has nothing to do with the appreciation of Shakspeare's intellect: Shakspeare might know little of Latin and less of Greek, and yet be comparable to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; as Burns, who may be said to have known no Latin, is comparable, in many passages, even to Horace. "The great instrument of the man of genius," says Thomas Moore, "is his own language," which some knowledge of another language may assist him to wield, but to the wielding of which the knowledge of another language is by no means necessary. The great dramatists of Greece were, in all probability, entirely ignorant of any language but their own; but such ignorance did not incapacitate them from using their own with effect, nor is to be regarded as being, in any way, any detraction from their merits. Shakspeare had but a limited acquaintance with Latin, but such limited acquaintance caused no debilitation of his mental powers, nor is to be mentioned at all to his disparagement. I desire, therefore, to be acquitted, both by A. E. B. and by all your other readers, of entertaining any disrespect for Shakspeare's high intellectual powers.