I'm not sure what Bald Eagle actually means by "intellectual giant".

When it comes to great playwrights, great novelists or great artists, who didn't go to university, there's no shortage. Sean O'Casey, Charles Dickens, William Blake, just for a start. Or of course all those women from the days before formal education was open to them - Jane Austin, the Brontes and many more.

And it's worth noting that Shakespeare's contemporary and friend, who was very much under the impression that William wrote all those plays, never went to university, but worked at the same trade as his stepfather, bricklaying, until he got the acting and playwriting bug, after a spell in the army.