I suppose, then, that Shakspere’s “small Latin” (as Jonson called it) enabled him to read in the works of the Roman clerks; to read sufficient for his uses. As a fact, he made use of English translations, and also of Latin texts. Scholars like Bacon do not use bad translations of easy Latin authors. If Bacon wanted Plutarch, he went to Plutarch in Greek, not to an English translation of a French translation of a Latin translation. Some works of Shakespeare, the _Lucrece_, for example, and _The Comedy of Errors_ (if he were not working over an earlier canvas from a more learned hand), and other passages, show knowledge of Latin texts which in his day had not appeared in published translations, or had not been translated at all as far as we know. In my opinion Will had Latin enough to puzzle out the sense of the Latin, never difficult, for himself. He could also “get a construe,” when in London, or help in reading, from a more academic acquaintance: or buy a construe at no high ransom from some poor scholar. No contemporary calls him scholarly; the generation of men who were small boys when he died held him for no scholar. The current English literature of his day was saturated with every kind of classical information; its readers, even if Latinless, knew, or might know a world of lore with which the modern man is seldom acquainted. The ignorant Baconian marvels: the classically educated Baconian who is not familiar with Elizabethan literature is amazed. Really there is nothing worthy of their wonder. Does any contemporary literary allusion to Shakespeare call him “_learned_”? He is “sweet,” “honey-tongued,” “mellifluous,” and so forth, but I ask for any contemporary who flattered him with the compliment of “learned.” What Ben Jonson thought of his learning (but Ben’s standard was very high), what Milton and Fuller, boys of eight when he died, thought of his learning, we know. They thought him “Fancy’s child” (Milton) and with no claims to scholarship (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.