Our poet’s want of scholarship has been the subject of endless controversy, and yet it is surely a very easy matter to decide.  Shakespeare was poor in dead school-cram, but he possessed a rich treasury of living and intuitive knowledge.  He knew a little Latin, and even something of Greek, though it may be not enough to read with ease the writers in the original.  With modern languages also, the French and Italian, he had, perhaps, but a superficial acquaintance.  The general direction of his mind was not to the collection of words but of facts.  With English books, whether original or translated, he was extensively acquainted:  we may safely affirm that he had read all that his native language and literature then contained that could be of any use to him in his poetical avocations.  He was sufficiently intimate with mythology to employ it, in the only manner he could wish, in the way of symbolical ornament.  He had formed a correct notion of the spirit of Ancient History, and more particularly of that of the Romans; and the history of his own country was familiar to him even in detail.  Fortunately for him it had not as yet been treated in a diplomatic and pragmatic spirit, but merely in the chronicle-style; in other words, it had not yet assumed the appearance of dry investigations respecting the development of political relations, diplomatic negotiations, finances, etc., but exhibited a visible image of the life and movement of an age prolific of great deeds.  Shakespeare, moreover, was a nice observer of nature; he knew the technical language of mechanics and artisans; he seems to have been well traveled in the interior of his own country, while of others he inquired diligently of traveled navigators respecting their peculiarity of climate and customs.  He thus became accurately acquainted with all the popular usages, opinions, and traditions which could be of use in poetry.

The proofs of his ignorance, on which the greatest stress is laid, are a few geographical blunders and anachronisms.  Because in a comedy founded on an earlier tale, he makes ships visit Bohemia, he has been the subject of much laughter.  But I conceive that we should be very unjust toward him, were we to conclude that he did not, as well as ourselves, possess the useful but by no means difficult knowledge that Bohemia is nowhere bounded by the sea.  He could never, in that case, have looked into a map of Germany, but yet describes elsewhere, with great accuracy, the maps of both Indies, together with the discoveries of the latest navigators.[21] In such matters Shakespeare is faithful only to the details of the domestic stories.  In the novels on which he worked, he avoided disturbing the associations of his audience, to whom they were known, by novelties—­the correction of errors in secondary and unimportant particulars.  The more wonderful the story, the more it ranged in a purely poetical region, which he transfers at will to an indefinite distance.