roughness of his rustic phraseology. His language would have been a dialect which must needs have been translated to be understood by modern English ears." * As Mr. White wrote these words, did it not occur to him that, by his own chronology, ** this Warwickshire rustic came to London with "Venus and Adonis" in his pocket, and began, almost immediately, the production of plays, not in the Warwickshire dialect, which he had grown up in from his birth, but in a diction that needs no translating "to be understood by modern English ears?" * Shakespeare's Works, Vol. I., p. cxcvi. ** Id., p. cxxi. Robert Burns became {219}great in the dialect of his home, which he made into music through the alembic of his genius. When, later in life, he essayed to write in metropolitan English, says Principal Shairp, "he was seldom more than a third-rate--a common clever versifier." * But this uncouth Warwickshire rustic writes, as his first essay in English composition, the most elegant verses the age produced, and which for polish and care surpass his very latest works! Every step in the received Shakespeare's life appears to have been a miracle: for, according to them, the boy Shakespeare needed to be taught nothing, but was born versed in every art, tongue, knowledge, and talent, and did every thing without tuition or preparation. And in the long vacation of this precious school how much our worthy pupil--whose paternal parent was in hiding from his creditors so that he dare not be seen at church--supplemented its curriculum by feasts of foreign travel! For it is only the careful student of these plays who knows or conceives either their wealth of exact reference to the minutest features of the lands or the localities in which their actions lie, or the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. There were no guide-books or itineraries of Venice published until after William Shakespeare had ceased writing for the stage: and yet, while schoolboy facts--such as that Venice is built in the sea, or that gondolas take the place of wheeled vehicles, or that there is a leaning tower at Pisa, or a coliseum at Verona or Rome--are not referred to (the out-door action in "Othello" or the "Merchant of Venice" is * * "English Men of Letters. Robert Burns.