had not been able to secure his reception in a higher character than that of call-boy, it is easy to understand the rapid strides with which a superior man reaches the summit of any career into which he has once obtained admission. But it would be more difficult to conceive that, with Greene’s example and protection, a theatrical career, or, at least, a desire to try his powers as an actor, would not have been Shakspeare’s first ambition. The time had come when mental ambitions were kindling on every side, and dramatic poetry, which had long been numbered among the national pleasures, had at length acquired in England that importance which calls for the production of master-pieces.
Nowhere on the Continent has a taste for poetry been so constant and popular as in Great Britain. Germany has had her Minnesingers, France her Troubadours and Trouvères; but these graceful apparitions of nascent poetry rapidly ascended to the superior regions of social order, and vanished before long. The English minstrels are visible, throughout the history of their country, in a position which has been more or less brilliant according to circumstances, but which has always been recognized by society, established by its acts, and determined by its rules. They appear as a regularly-organized corporation, with its special business, influence, and rights, penetrating into all ranks of the nation, and associating in the diversions of the people as well as in the festivities of their chiefs. Heirs of the Breton bards and the Scandinavian Scalds, with whom they are incessantly confounded by English writers of the Middle Ages, the minstrels of Old England retained for a considerable length of time a portion of the authority of their predecessors. When afterward subjugated, and quickly deserted, Great Britain did not, like Gaul,
