Little more than two months had passed over the head of the infant Shakspeare, when he became exposed to danger of such an imminent kind, that we have reason to rejoice he was not snatched from us even while he lay in the cradle. He was born, as we have already recorded, on the 23d of April, 1564; and on the 30th of the June following, the plague broke out at Stratford, the ravages of which dreadful disease were so violent, that between this last date and the close of December, not less than two hundred and thirty-eight persons perished; "of which number," remarks Mr. Malone, "probably two hundred and sixteen died of that malignant distemper; and one only of the whole number resided, not in Stratford, but in the neighbouring town of Welcombe. From the two hundred and thirty-seven inhabitants of Stratford, whose names appear in the Register, twenty-one are to be subducted, who, it may be presumed, would have died in six months, in the ordinary course of nature; for in the five preceding years, reckoning, according to the style of that time, from March 25. 1559, to March 25. 1564, two hundred and twenty-one persons were buried at Stratford, of whom two hundred and ten were townsmen: that is, of these latter, forty-two died each year at an average. Supposing one in thirty-five to have died annually, the total number of the inhabitants of Stratford at that period was one thousand four hundred and seventy; and consequently the plague, in the last six months of the year 1564, carried off more than a seventh part of them. Fortunately for mankind it did not reach the house in which the infant Shakspeare lay; for not one of that name appears in the dead list. May we suppose, that, like Horace, he lay secure and fearless in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Muses, to whom his future life was to be devoted, and covered over:— —————— "_sacrâ Lauroque, collataque myrto, Non sine Diis animosus infans_."[24:A] It is now impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty the mode which was adopted in the education of this aspiring genius; all that time has left us on the subject is, that he was sent, though but for a short period, to the free-school of Stratford, a seminary founded in the reign of Henry the Sixth, by the Rev. —— Jolepe, M. A., a native of the town; and which, after sharing, at the general dissolution of chantries, religious houses, &c. the usual fate, was restored and patronised by Edward the Sixth, a short time previous to his death. Here it was, that he acquired the _small Latin and less Greek_, which Jonson has attributed to him, a mode of phraseology from which it must be inferred, that he was at _least acquainted_ with _both_ languages; and, perhaps, we may add, that he who has obtained some knowledge of Greek, however slight, may, with little hesitation, be supposed to have proceeded considerably beyond the limits of mere elementary instruction in Latin.