appointed day, however, he encountered "the gravest philosophers and divines," when he acquitted himself to the astonishment of all who heard him, and received the public praises of the president, and four of the most eminent professors. Next day, he was equally victorious at a tilting match at the Louver, where, through the enthusiasm of the ladies of the court, and from the versatility of his talents, his youth, the gracefulness of his manners, and the beauty of his person, he was named L'Admirable.

After two years' service in the army of Henry III., Crichton repaired to Italy, and at Rome repeated in the presence of the pope and cardinals the literary challenge and triumph that had gained him so much honor in Paris. From Rome he went to Venice, and in the university of the neighboring city of Padua, reaped fresh honors by Latin poetry, scholastic disputation, an exposition of the errors of Aristotle and his commentators, and (as a playful wind-up of the day's labor) a declamation upon the happiness of ignorance. He next, in consequence of the doubts of some incredulous persons, and the reports that he was a literary impostor, gave a public challenge: the contest, which included the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies, and the mathematics of the time, was prolonged during three days, before an inuumerable concourse of people; when Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, who was present at this "miraculous encounter," states Crichton to have proven completely victorious.

Crichton now pursued his travels to the court of Mantua, but to a combat more tragical than those carried on by the tongue or by the pen. Here he met a certain Italian gentleman "of a mighty able, nimble, and vigorous body, but by nature fierce, cruel, warlike, and audacious, and superlatively expert and dexterous in the use of his weapon." He had already killed three of the best swordsmen of Mantua; but Crichton, who had studied the sword from his youth, and who had probably improved himself in the use of the rapier in Italy, challenged the bravo: they fought; the young Scotchman was victorious, and the Italian left dead on the spot. At the court of Mantua, too, Crichton wrote Italian comedies, and played the principal parts in them himself, with great success. But he was shortly after assassinated by Vincenzo Gonzaga, son of the Duke of Mantua, it is supposed through jealousy. Thus was Crichton cut off in his twentysecond year, without leaving any proof of his genius except a few Latin verses, printed by Aldus Manutius; and the testimonials of undoubted and extreme admiration of several

distinguished Itlalian authors who were his cotemporaries and associates.

HOW GEORGE ABBOT, THE CLOTHWEAVER'S SON, BECAME ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

In 1562, there was born unto a poor clothworker, at Guildford, in Surrey, a son, under these remarkable circumstances. His mother, shortly before his birth, dreamt that if she could eat a jack or a pike, the child would become a great man. She accordingly sought for the fish; and accidentally, taking up some of the river water (that runs close by the house) in a pail, she also took up the jack, dressed it, and devoured it almost all. This odd affair induced several persons of quality to offer themselves to be sponsors when the child was christened; and this the poverty of the parents induced them joyfully to accept. Such was the tradition of the place, which Aubrey, in 1692, heard on the testimony of the minister, and other trustworthy inhabitants.

In spite of the dream, however, George Abbot would, in all probability, have been a clothworker, like his father, had there not been in those days many admirable institutions for the education of the humbler classes. He was sent to the Free Grammar School, founded by a grocer of London in 1553, for thirty "of the poorest men's sons" of Guildford, to be taught to read and write English, and cast accounts perfectly, so that they should be fitted for apprentices, etc. In 1578 he was removed to Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1597 was elected Master of University College. He was also three times elected Vice-Chancellor of the University, so that his reputation and influence at Oxford must have been considerable. His erudition was great: in 1604 he was one of the persons appointed for the new translation of the Bible; and he was one of eight to whom the whole of the New Testament, except the Epistles, was intrusted. In 1609, he was made Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry; next year, translated to the See of London; and in little more than a month, he was elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Two other sonst of the poor clothworker were almost equally fortunate in advancement. The Archbishop's elder brother and school-fellow, Robert, became Bishop of Salisbury; and his youngest brother, Maurice, was an eminent London merchant, one of the first Directors of the East India Company, Lord Mayor, and representative of the City in Parliament. Archbishop Abbot attended King James in his last illness, and he crowned Charles I. "He founded a fair Hospital, well built, and liberally endowed," at Guildford, for 20 brethren and sisters. He was also a munificent

benefactor to the poor of Guilford, Croydon, and Lambeth The humble cottage tenement in which he was born exists to this day in 1692 it was a public-house, with the sign of the Three Mariners.

SHAKSPEARE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

We have already spoken of King Edward's Free Grammar School, at Birmingham; and, in the same county of Warwick, at Stratford-upon-Avon, is a free grammar-school, founded by a native of the town, in the reign of Henry VI., and celebrated as the School of Shakspeare. Immediately over the Guild Hall is the school-room, now divided into two chambers, and having a low flat plaster ceiling in place of the arched roof. Mr. Knight thus argues for the identity of the room:

"The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free Grammar School of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of seven years of age, and able to read. The Grammar School was essentially connected with the Corporation of Stratford; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspeare became qualified for admission to a school where the best education of the time was given, literally for nothing, his father in that year being chief alderman, should not have sent him to the school."

Thither, it is held, Shakspeare, born at Stratford in 1564, went about the year 1571. Mr. Knight impressively continues:

"Assuredly the worthy curate of the neighboring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the schoolmaster, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his shining morning face' first passed out of the main street into that old court through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first instructor, has left no memorials of his talents or acquirements; and in a few years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honor be to them; for it is impossible to imagine that the teachers of William Shakspeare were evil instructors, giving the boy husks instead of wholesome aliment."

At Stratford, then, at the free Grammar School of his own town, Mr. Knight assumes Shakspeare to have received in every just sense of the word the education of a scholar. This, it is true, is described by Ben Jonson as "small Latin and less Greek;" Fuller states that "his learning was very little;" and Aubrey, that "he understood Latin pretty well." But the question is set at rest by "the indisputable fact that the very earliest writings of Shakspeare are imbued with a spirit of classical antiquity; and that the all-wise nature of the learning that manifests itself in them, whilst it offers the best proof of his familiarity with the ancient writers, is a circumstance which has misled those who never attempted to dispute the existence of the learning which was displayed in the direct pedantry of his cotemporaries.' So that, because Shakspeare uses his knowledge skillfully, he is assumed not to have read!

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To assume that William Shakspeare did not stay long enough at the grammar-school of Stratford to obtain a very fair proficiency in Latin, with some knowledge of Greek, is to assume an absurdity upon the face of circumstances.

Of Shakspeare's life, immediately after his quitting Stratford, little is positively known. Collier concurs with Malone "in thinking, that after Shakspeare quitted the Free School, he was employed in the office of an attorney. Proofs of something like a legal education are to be found in many of his plays, and it may safely be asserted that they (law phrases) do not occur anything like so frequently in the dramatic productions of any of his cotemporaries."*

"In these days, the education of the universities commenced much earlier than at present. Boys intended for the learned professions, and more especially for the church, commonly went to Oxford and Cambridge at eleven or twelve years of age. If they were not intended for those professions, they probably remained at the Grammar School till they were thirteen or fourteen; and then they were fitted for being apprenticed to tradesmen, or articled to attorneys, a numerous and thriving body in those days of cheap litigation. Many also went early to the Inns of Court, which were the universities of the law, and where there was real study and discipline in direct connexion with the several societies."—— Knight's Life of Shakspeare.

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LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY, IN SHROPSHIRE.

The celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury, born 1581, in his Autobiography, thus describes his early tuition:

"My Schoolmaster in the house of my lady grandmother (at Eyton, in Shropshire). began at the age of seven years to teach me the Alphabet, and afterwards Grammar, and other books commonly read in schools, in which I profited so much, that upon this theme Audaces fortuna juvat, I made an oration of a sheet of paper and 50 or 60 verses in the space of one day."

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He adds that under Mr. Newton, at Didlebury, in Shropshire, he attained to the knowledge of the Greek Tongue and Logic, in so much that at twelve years old his parents sent him to Oxford to University College, where he disputed at his first coming in Logic, and made in Greek the exercises required in that College, oftener than in Latin. He was a patron of Ben Jonson, who, in a complimentary epigram, addresses him as "all-virtuous. Herbert." His Life of Henry VIII. is a masterpiece of

*The name "William Shakspere" occurs in a certificate of the names and arms of trained soldiers-trained militia, we should now call them in the hundred of Barlichway, in the county of Warwick-under the hand of Sir Fulk Greville ("Friend to Sir Philip Sydney"), Sir Edward Greville, and Thomas Spencer. Was our William Shakspere a soldier? Why not? Jonson was a soldier, and had slain his man. Donne had served in the Low Countries. Why not Shakspere in arms? At all events, here is a field for inquiry and speculation. The date is September 23, 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot; and the lists were possibly prepared through instructions issued by Cecil in consequence of secret information as to the working of the plot in Warwickshire - the proposed headquarters of the insurrection.-State Papers, edited by Mary Anne Everett Green.

historic biography, worthy to rank with Bacon's Life of Henry VII.*

ADMIRAL BLAKE AT BRIDGWATER.

Robert Blake, "Admiral and General at Sea," was born in 1598, at Bridgwater, in a house of the Tudor age, which remains to this day; adjoining is the secluded garden, in which "the ruddy-faced and curly-haired boy, Robert Blake, played and pondered, as was his habit, until the age of sixteen." He was sent early to the Bridgwater Grammar School, which had been founded some five-and-forty years before, and endowed by Queen Elizabeth; and was then considered one of the best foundations of its kind in England. "At the Grammar School he made some progress in his Greek and Latin; something of navigation, ship-building, and the routine of sea duties he probably learned from his father, or from his father's factors and servants. His own taste, however, the habit of his mind, and the bent of his ambition, led to literature. He was the first of his race who had shown any vocation to letters and learning, and his father, proud of his talents and his studies, resolved that he should have some chance of rising to eminence. Nor was this early culture thrown away. At sixteen he was already prepared for the university, and at his earnest desire was sent to Oxford, where he matriculated as a member of St. Alban's Hall, in 1615." He removed to Wadham College, and there remained several years, took the usual honors, and completed his education; and in the great dining-hall of Wadham a portrait of the Admiral is shown with pride as that of its most illustrious scholar. Blake, in good time, took his degree of Master of Arts at Oxford; he had read the best authors in Greek and Latin, and wrote the latter language sufficiently well for verse and epigram. Even in the busiest days of his public life, it was his pride not to forget his old studies.†

WALLER'S DULLNESS.

Edmund Waller, the poet, one of the best examples of poetic style and diction, was born at Coleshill, in Berkshire, in 1605, and was sent early to the Grammar School of Market Wickham, where he was said to be "dull and slow in his task." Mr.

* Lord Herbert was the elder brother of George Herbert, who studied foreign languages in hopes of rising to be Secretary of State, but being disappointed in his views at court, he took orders, became Prebend of Lincoln, and became Rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury. His poems were printed in 1635, under the title of the Temple; of which 20,000 copies were sold in a few years. His best prose work is The Country Parson. Lord Bacon dedicated to him his Translation of some Psalms into English verse.

See Hepworth Dixon's Life of Blake.