“I will turn my back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators.  It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as, Blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets,—­I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches.  But, oh grief! Tempus edax rerum,—­what is that will last always?  The sea, exhaled by drops, will, in continuance, be dry; and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage.”

It has most unaccountably been assumed that this passage refers to Shakespeare;[E] and it is even so cited by Lord Campbell himself,—­to our surprise, when we remember his professional training and experience as a sifter of evidence.  But, as far as regards its reference to a leaving of law for literature, it is clearly of general application.  Nash says, “It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions, etc., to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves," etc.  By the trade of Noverint he meant that of an attorney.  The term was not uncommonly applied to members of that profession, because of the phrase, Noverint universi per presentes, (Know all men by these presents,) with which deeds, bonds, and many other legal instruments then began.  And Nash’s testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history of the age.  There was no regular army in Elizabeth’s time; and the younger sons of gentlemen and well-to-do yeomen, who received from their fathers little more than an education and a very small allowance, and who did not become either military or maritime adventurers, opening their oyster with a sword, entered the Church or the profession of the law in its higher or lower grade; and as at that period there was much more demand for lawyers and much less for clergymen than there is now, and the Church had ceased to be a stepping-stone to political power and patronage, while the law had become more than ever before an avenue to fame, to fortune, and to rank, by far the greater number of these young gentlemen aspired to the woolsack.  But then, as now, the early years of professional life were seasons of sharp trial and bitter disappointment.  Necessity pressed sorely or pleasure wooed resistlessly, and the slender purse wasted rapidly away while the young attorney or barrister awaited the employment that did not come.  He knew then, as now he knows, “the rich man’s scorn, the proud man’s contumely”; nay, he felt, as now he sometimes feels, the tooth