published for an Edinburgh public.  No classical, no theatrical materials were given; or, if he read the old drama, he could not, in his rural conditions, and in a Scotland where the theatre was in a very small way, venture on producing plays, for which there was no demand, while he had no knowledge of the Stage.  Burns found and filled the only channels open to him, in a printed book, and in music books for which he transmuted old songs.

The bookish materials offered to Will, in London, were crammed with reminiscences from the classics, were mainly romantic and theatrical; and, from his profession of actor, by far the best channel open to him was the theatre.  Badly as it paid the outside author, there was nothing that paid better.  Venus and Adonis brought “more praise than pudding,” if one may venture a guess.  With the freedom of the theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all depths.  No such opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used it, and, owing to a variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar high or wing wide.

I take Shakespeare, in London at least, to have read the current Elizabethan light literature—­Euphues, Lyly’s Court comedies, novels full of the classics and of social life; Spenser, Sidney—­his Defence of Poesy, and Arcadia (1590)—­with scores of tales translated from the Italian, French, and Spanish, all full of foreign society, and discourses of knights and ladies.  He saw the plays of the day, perhaps as one of “the groundlings.”  He often beheld Society, from without, when acting before the Queen and at great houses.  He had thus, if I am right, sufficient examples of style and manner, and knowledge of how the great were supposed (in books) to comport and conduct themselves.  The books were cheap, and could be borrowed, and turned over at the booksellers’ stalls. {96a} The Elizabethan style was omnipresent.  Suppose that Shakespeare was a clever man, a lover of reading, a rapid reader with an excellent memory, easily influenced, like Burns, by what he read, and I really think that my conjectures are not too audacious.  Not only “the man in the street,” but “the reading public” (so loved by Coleridge), have not the beginning of a guess as to the way in which a quick man reads.  Watch them poring for hours over a newspaper!  Let me quote what Sir Walter Raleigh says:  {97a} “Shakespeare was one of those swift and masterly readers who know what they want of a book; they scorn nothing that is dressed in print, but turn over the pages with a quick discernment of all that brings them new information, or jumps with their thought, or tickles their fancy.  Such a reader will have done with a volume in a few minutes, yet what he has taken from it he keeps for years.  He is a live man; and is sometimes judged by slower wits to be a learned man.”

I am taking Shakespeare to have been a reader of this kind, as was Dr. Johnson, as are not a few men who have no pretensions to genius.  The accomplishment is only a marvel to—­well, I need not be particular about the kind of person to whom it is a marvel!