Appleton Morgan takes very positive ground against Shaksper's literary knowledge on the basis of his lack of books. On page 266 of his "Shakespearean Myth" he

says:

"But even if Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Julius Cæsar could have been produced by machinery, and engrossed currente calamo (so that the author's first draft should be the acting copy for the players), they could hardly have been composed, nowadays, without a library. And even had William Shaksper possessed an encyclopedia (such as were first invented two hundred years or so after his funeral), he would not have found it inclusive of all the references he needed for these five plays alone. They can not be studied as they were capable of being studied by Coleridge and Gervinus-without a library. And yet are we to be asked to believe that they were composed without one, in the days when such a thing as a dictionary even was unknown? Who ever heard of William Shaksper in his library pulling down volumes, dipping into folios, peering into manuscripts, his brain in throe and his pen in labor, weaving the warp and woof of his poetry and his philosophy, at the expense of Greece and Rome and Egypt; pillaging alike from tomes of Norsemen lore and Southern romance-for the pastime of the rabble that sang bawdy songs and swallowed beer amid the straw of his pit, and burned juniper and tossed his journey-actors in blankets?

"It is always interesting to read of the habitudes of authors of paper-saving Pope scribbling his Iliad on the backs of old correspondence, of Spenser by his fireside in his library at Kilcolman Castle, of Scott among his dogs, of Gibbon biting at the peaches that hung on the trees

in his garden at Lausanne, of Schiller declaiming by mountain brooksides and in forest paths, of Goldsmith in his garrets and his jails. Even of Chaucer, dead and buried before Shaksper saw the light, we read of his studies at Cambridge, his call to the bar and his chambers in the Middle Temple. But of William Shaksper—after ransacking tradition, gossip, and the record, save and except the statement of Ben Jonson how he had heard the actor's anecdote about his never blotting his lines,not a word, not a breath can be found to connect him with or surprise him in any agency or employment as to the composition of the plays we insist upon calling his— much less to the possession of a single book. Had we found this massive draught upon antiquity in the remains of an immortal Milton or a mortal Tupper, or in all the range of letters between, we should not have failed to presume a library. Why should we believe that William Shaksper needed none?-that as his pen ran, he never paused to lift a volume from the shelf to refresh or verify his marvelously retentive recollection? There was no Astor or Mercantile Library around the corner from the Globe or the Blackfriars in those days. And as for his possessions, he leaves in his will no hint of book or library, much less of the literature the booksellers had taken the liberty of christening with his name! Where is the scholar who glories not in his scholarship? By universal testimony, the highest pleasure which an author draws from his own completed work, the pride of the poet in his own poems is their chiefest payment. The simple fact which stands out so prominently in the life of this man that nobody can gainsay it-that William Shaksper took neither pride nor pleasure in any of the works which

passed current with the rest of the world as his, might well make the most casual student of these days suspicious of a claim that, among his other accomplishments, William Shaksper was an author at all."

While Morgan's reasoning is correct, I am content to claim only that the facts shown as to Shaksper's lack of a library form a strong presumptive link in the chain of presumptions against his ability to compose a poem or a play.

A man without a library, who is learned, studious, and persistent, may borrow from his friends and patrons, and he may cull from all the literary products of his time or former times, but such a course of persevering study could not escape the observation and mention of the man's contemporaries and, as in the case of Drayton and Dekker, the fact would be often and publicly noted and commented upon.

The case against Shaksper does not rest upon one presumption. It is a case of admitted fact supported by many strong presumptions.

Donnelly makes a very strong argument against Shaksper, based on this presumption. He asks the question, "Where are his books?" and then he says at page 76 of his Cryptogram "The author of the plays was a man of large learning; he had read and studied Homer, Plato, Heliodorus, Sophocles, Euripides, Dares Phrygius, Horace, Virgil, Lucretius, Statius, Catullus, Seneca, Ovid, Plautus, Plutarch, Boccaccio, Berni, and an innumerable array of French novelists and Spanish and Danish writers. The books which have left their traces in the plays would of themselves have constituted a large library. What became of them? Did William Shaksper of Stratford possess

such a library? If he did, there is not the slightest reference to it in his will."

If Shaksper had left any books, the Halls, as his residuary legatees, would have received and owned them. But none were ever received, owned, claimed, or sold by them.

One sarcastic commentator and Baconian advocate, alluding to Shaksper's lack of a library, said that "the books which have left their traces in the plays would of themselves have constituted a large library. What became of them? There were no public libraries in that day to which the student could resort. The man who wrote the plays must have loved his library; he would have remembered it in his last hours. He could not have forgotten Montaigne, Holinshed, Plutarch, Ovid, Plato, Horace, the French and Italian romances, to remember his 'brod silver and gilt bole,' his 'sword', his 'wearing apparel' and 'his second-best bed with the furniture.' There is no evidence that Shaksper possessed a single book."

CHAPTER VII.

SHAKSPER GAVE HIS CHILDREN NO EDUCATION.

"Ignorance is the curse of God,

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."

-Second Part of Henry VI, iv, 7.

If the writer of the seventh scene of the fourth act of second Henry the Sixth believed that ignorance was the curse of God, and if he had children, he certainly would either by himself or with the aid of a teacher have taught them to read and write. If William Shaksper was that writer, then he permitted his own children to be afflicted with that curse of God, for his two daughters were ignorant and uneducated. One fact is worth a thousand guesses, and it is an undeniable fact that Shaksper's children were grossly ignorant. Judith Shaksper, his daughter, could not even write her name. The proof as to her ignorance is clear and convincing and the most prejudiced Shaksper admirer can not truthfully deny this statement. Halliwell-Phillips says: "When Judith Shakespeare was invited in December, 1611, to be a subscribing witness to two instruments respecting a house at the southeast corner of Wood Street, then being sold by Mrs. Quiney to one William Mountford for the large sum of 131 pounds, in both instances her attestations were executed with marks." Susanna, the elder sister, who married John Hall, was also uneducated and her own conduct with relation to her deceased husband's effects goes to show that she was an ignorant woman. Phillips says of her,