The probabilities from character and education are those that the Baconians specially present to us in favour of their theory; so it is well to consider this point first.

The psychologic aspect is of prime importance in such a discussion, but the historical is a part of the psychological. All minds live and learn through environments; all are, to a certain extent, moulded by circumstances.

The first question naturally to be considered is the birthplace of an individual. William Shakspere was not born in London, it is true, but probably he was born in a more favourable nursery for poets than York House, Strand.

Warwickshire belonged to the province Flavia Cæsariensis. It is a central county; the great Roman roads from Dover to Chester and from Totnes to Lincoln met there, so that much traffic and interchange of ideas must have sharpened the natives, from the times of the Romans on into the sixteenth century. In Saxon times it was the district of Mercia, whither King Alfred sent for scholars, and which gave the literary language to later England. This pre-eminence it had not lost. Bacon, in his Jewel of Joy, dedicated in 1549 to the Princess Elizabeth, speaks of it as the most intellectual of the English counties.

Drayton speaks of it as “warlike Warwickshire.” It was the border-land between the Celtic and Teutonic races. Shakspere is the type Englishman who has, as Green says, “combined the mobility and fancy of the Celt with the depth and energy of the Teuton,” and the place of his birth must not be ignored.