Pinch is not called a schoolmaster in the text of the play, but in the stage-direction of the earliest edition (1623) he is described, on his entrance, as "a schoole-master call'd Pinch." In old times the village pedagogue often had the reputation of being a conjurer; that is, of one who could exorcise evil spirits--perhaps because he was the one man in the village, except the priest, who could speak Latin, the only language supposed to be "understanded of devils." A certain master of St. Alban's School in the middle of the 16th century declared that "by no entreaty would he teach any scholar he had, further than his father had learned before them," arguing that, if educated beyond that point, they would "prove saucy rogues and control their fathers." The masters of the Stratford school at the time when Shakespeare probably attended it were university men of at least fair scholarship and ability, as we infer from the fact that they rapidly gained promotion in the church. Thomas Hunt, who was master during the most important years of William's school course, became vicar of the neighboring village of Luddington. "In the pedantic Holofernes of _Love's Labour's Lost_, Shakespeare has carefully portrayed the best type of the rural schoolmaster, as in Pinch he has portrayed the worst, and the freshness and fulness of detail imparted to the former portrait may easily lead to the conclusion that its author was drawing upon his own experience." We need not suppose that Holofernes is the exact counterpart of Master Hunt, but the latter was probably, like the former, a thorough scholar. WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL. We may imagine young William wending his way to the Grammar School for the first time on a May morning in 1571. If he was born on the 23d of April, 1564 (or May 3d, according to our present calendar), he had now reached the age of seven years, at which he could enter the school. The only other requirement for admission, in the case of a Stratford boy, was that he should be able to read; and this he had probably learned at home with the aid of a "horn-book," such as he afterwards referred to in _Love's Labour's Lost_ (v. 1. 49):-- "Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on its head?" This primer of our forefathers, which continued in common use in England down to the middle of the last century at least, was a single printed leaf, usually set in a frame of wood and covered with a thin plate of transparent horn, from which it got its name. There was generally a handle to hold it by, and through a hole in the handle a cord was put by which the "book" was slung to the girdle of the scholar. In a book printed in 1731 we read of "a child, in a bodice coat and leading-strings, with a horn-book tied to her side." In 1715 we find mention of the price of a horn-book as twopence; but Shakespeare's probably cost only half as much.