I. For the First Class(Prima).

a. Prose: Macaulay’s History, Essays, alternating with some speeches of the greatest English orators and Gibbon's Decline and Fall etc. Add.: Locke's Essay on Human Unterstanding.

b. Poetryf: Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice, King Lear; Milton's Paradise Lost, alter- nating with some poems of Dryden or of Byron, Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake.

II. For the Second Class(Secunda).

a. Prose: The easier parts of Macaulay’s History and Essays, the easy speeches of the same author, alternating with Hume's History of England, and the Dialogues concerning Natu- ral Religion of the same author.

b. Poetry: Shakspeare's Julius Caesar, alternating with Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage or Tennyson's Enoch Arden, Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake.

III. For the Third Class(Tertia).

Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. Some poems dictated and learnt by heart.

As to great William Shakspeare, who is standing out among the authors of the first and the second class, we shall now attempt giving in the following pages an historical and metrical introduction into the study of his works, which we hope will prove very useful for the private studies of young men and an examination of his Julius Caesar, which will acquaint them with one of the most excellent plays of the greatest English poet.

The father of our dramatist, John Shakspeare, was successively a glover, a butcher, and a woolcomber or dealer in wool at Stratford-upon-Avon, where William was born on the 23 d of April 1564. The different forms of writing the name of Shakspeare exceed the number of fifty(See: Elze, Leben Shakspeare’s), but there are five signatures of our poet which are presumed to be genuine autographs; Shakspeare signs upon each of the three briefs of his will: William Shackspere, W. Shakspere, William Shakspeare. After having learnt chis small Latin at the free grammar-school of his native town, William Shakspeare married at the age of eighteen Anne, the daughter of Richard Hathaway, a substantial yeoman in the neighbour- hood of Stratford. Soon after he was father of one son and two daughters, and being prose- cuted by Sir Thomas Lucy for having stolen deer on his property, Shakspeare wrote a lam- poon*) upon the same gentleman, affixed it to his gate and then fled to London, where he embraced the occupation of a player, and subsequently of a writer for the stage; already by the year 1589 he became one of the proprietors of the Blackfriars Theatre. Afterwards Shak- speare with his friends, the actors Lawrence Fletcher, Richard Burbage and others established a

*) The offensive pasquinade begins with the following lines: &A parliament-member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crow, at London an asse, If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it, Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.)