the same form and color as the lark, but inferior as a singer. And so the figures are always accurate, "the ousel-cock so black of hue," "the throstle with his note so true," "the wren with little quill," "the russet-pated chough, rising and cawing at the guns report." And so of flowers, as when Perdita speaks of= `````--daffodils, ````That come before the swallow dares, and take ```The winds of March with beauty--= the writer knew that in England the daffodil blooms in February and March, while the swallow never appears until April. In none of the allusions to nature or natural phenomena in the plays, is there any such thing as guess work. * Now, what was the necessity for all this technical, geographical, botanical, and occult learning, in a simple drama thrown off by an Elizabethan dramatist, earning his living by catering to an Elizabethan audience? It was not only unnecessary, but almost fatal to his success. The Elizabethan audience did not want scientific treatises. * And see further "The natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare," by R. Paterson. London: A. K. Newman & Co., Leadenhall street, "The natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare," by R. Paterson. London: A. K. Newman & Co., Leadenhall street, 1841. But {230}nothing--from governmental polity to the stuffing of a fowl--from processes of the human mind to the management of kitchen gardens--was too small or rude for a philosopher's (let us say for Francis Bacon's) vast purposes. How otherwise are they to be accounted for? That Shakespeare borrowed Greene's famous "sea-coast" is a point either way. If he took it supposing that Bohemia had a sea-coast, the omnipotent knowledge assigned him by his worshipers failed him at least once. And if he knew (as is now claimed, though on what authority we know not), that Bohemia once possessed provinces on the Adriatic, he knew, as usual, what the acute research of three hundred years has only just developed. And was agriculture taught at this Stratford school, and politics and the art of war?1 And was there any thing that William Shakespeare did not know? We are entitled to ask these questions, for it must be remembered that, before the appearance of the Shakespearean dramas, there was practically no literature written in the English tongue. To use the words of Macauley, "A person who did not read Latin and Greek could read nothing, or next to nothing.... The Italian was the only modern language which possessed any thing that could be called a literature." ** One possessing, then, merely "small Latin and less Greek," could not have written "Shakespeare." Still less could he have written it out of Gower and Chaucer, and the {231}shelf-full of English hooks that made up all there was in English letters. * See "Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?" Three Notelets on Shakespeare, by Wm. J. Thoms, London. John Russell Smith, 1865. ** Essays. Lord Bacon.