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nearby indicate that men of the class who taught at Stratford had the regulation schoolbooks. It is thus to be inferred that Shakspere and Stratford youth would be subjected to the regular curriculum in the regular order. And it may be added, as the Quyny family and Field show, with the regular results.
Nor should we take too seriously the evident fact that Stratford grammar school was not Eton or some other great public school. Fortunately, the school is, after all, comparatively unimportant. It is to be feared that "education" has not yet learned the distinction between learn and teach which at the grammatical stage every schoolmaster more or less unsuccessfully tries to drill into his students. Many have a touching faith in the ability to teach which I, as a "beaten" pedagogue now beginning his second third of a century ,in service cannot share. The important thing is not teaching but learning. In a comparatively free society, as was England then, or America even today, the best men have a disconcerting habit of getting taught at the poorest schools, or even of not getting taught at all. Then the "poor" school points with pride to its product, and is sometimes permitted to beg the question by becoming forthwith a "good" school. Even when the man has had no formal teaching at all, the faith still clings; "Experience is the best teacher." It may be after all that teaching is only a helping to learn. And it may even be too that our best learn in spite of us. In Shakspere's age, there was Ben Jonson himself, who was proud of the fact that he did not owe his "great" scholarship to the universities. So far as we can judge, he was only a "learned grammarian," though from a good school. Therein lies part of the point to his pharisaical sentence upon Shakspere's "small Latine, and Iesse Greeke." Shakspere had also a gram-mar school training, but it was from a school which Jonson would have considered inferior to his own-and the worst of it must have been that Shakspere did not care. Had he desired, he too might have perfected himself in the Classics and have taken pride in his self-made scholarship, as did Jonson. It is thus abundantly clear that Shakspere did not really desire or value such scholarship. There is plenty of evidence on that point, including Shakspere's attitude to the pedantry of schools and scholars. Indeed, it may be a piece of the greatest good fortune that Shakspere had no better an education to waste his time upon things which were for him unimportant. He got as much of formal education as he really wanted, and I suspect as much as he really needed. The test of time seems to have shown that clearly.
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