With regard to the affirmation of Aubrey, that Shakspeare had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country, the same ingenious critic very justly remarks, that "many traditional anecdotes, though not perfectly accurate, contain an adumbration of the truth;" and then adds, "I am strongly inclined to think that the assertion contains, though not the truth, yet something like it: I mean that Shakspeare had been employed for some time in his younger years as a _teacher_ in the country; though Dr. Farmer has incontestably proved, that he could not have been a teacher of _Latin_. I have already suggested my opinion, that before his coming to London he had acquired some share of legal knowledge in the office of a petty country-conveyancer, or in that of the steward of some manorial court. _If he began to apply to this study at the age of eighteen_, two years afterwards he might have been sufficiently conversant with conveyances to have _taught others_ the form of such legal assurances as are usually prepared by country-attorneys; and perhaps spent two or three years in this employment before he removed from Stratford to London. Some uncertain rumour of this kind might have continued to the middle of the last century, and by the time it reached Mr. Aubrey, our poet's original occupation was changed from a scrivener to that of a schoolmaster."[46:A] In this quotation it will be immediately perceived that the period of our author's application to the study of the law, is now supposed to have occurred _at the age of eighteen_, when he must have been long removed from school, and that he is also conceived to have been a _teacher_ of what he had acquired in the profession. These conjectures of Mr. Malone, which, in their latter and modified state, appear to me singularly happy, have met with a warm advocate in Mr. Whiter: "The anecdotes," he remarks, "which have been delivered down to us respecting our poet, appear to me neither improbable nor, when duly examined, inconsistent with each other: even those which seem least allied to probability, contain in my opinion the _adumbrata_, if not _expressa signa veritatis_. Mr. Malone has admirably sifted the accounts of _Aubrey_; and there is no truth, that is obtained by a train of reasoning not reducible to demonstration, of which I am more convinced than the conjecture of Mr. Malone, who supposes that Shakspeare, before he quitted Stratford, was employed in such matters of business as belonged to the office of a country-attorney, or the steward of a manor-court. I have stated his conjecture in general terms, that the _fact_, as it relates to our poet's _legal allusions_, might be separated from any accidental circumstances of _historical truth_. I am astonished, however, that Mr. Malone has confirmed his conjecture by so few examples. I can supply him with a very large accession."[46:B]