STRATFORD-ON-AVON, They soft flowing Avon, by thy silver stream Of things more than mortal sweet Shakspeare would dream; GARRICK. To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may; let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The arm-chair is his throne, the poker his sceptre, and the little parlour, of some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day; and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence, knows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment. "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn? thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a complacent look about the little parlour of the Red Horse, at Stratford-on-Avon. The words of sweet Shakspeare were just passing through my mind as the clock struck midnight from the tower of the church in which he lies buried. There was a gentle tap at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating air, whether I had rung. I understood it as a modest hint that it was time to retire. My dream of absolute dominion was at an end; so abdicating my throne, like a prudent potentate, to avoid being deposed, and putting the Stratford Guide-Book under my arm, as a pillow companion, I went to bed, and dreamt all night of Shakspeare, the Jubilee, and David Garrick. The next morning was one of those quickening mornings which we sometimes have in early spring; for it was about the middle of March. The chills of a long winter had suddenly given way; the north wind had spent its last gasp; and a mild air came stealing from the west, breathing the breath of life into nature, and wooing every bud and flower to burst forth into fragrance and beauty. I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit was to the house where Shakspeare was born, and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his father's craft of wool-combing. It is a small mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every language, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, from the prince to the peasant; and present a simple, but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to the great poet of nature. played Hamlet; and the identical lantern with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb! There was an ample supply also of Shakspeare's mulberry-tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross; of which there is enough extant to build a ship of the line. The most favourite object of curiosity, however, is Shakspeare's chair. It stands in the chimney-nook of a small gloomy chamber, just behind what was his father's shop. Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, watching the slowly-revolving spit, with all the longing of an urchin; or of an evening, listening to the crones and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England. In this chair it is the custom of every one who visits the house to sit: whether this be done with the hope of imbibing any of the inspiration of the bard, I am at a loss to say; I merely mention the fact; and mine hostess privately assured me, that, though built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair had to be new-bottomed at least once in three years. It is worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraordinary chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto, or the flying chair of the Arabian enchanter; for though sold some few years since to a northern princess, yet, strange to tell, it has found its way back again to the old chimney-corner. I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am very willing to be deceived, where the deceit is pleasant and costs nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men ; and would advise all travellers who travel for their gratification to be the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them, and enjoy all the charm of the reality? There is nothing like resolute good-humoured credulity in these matters; and on this occasion I went even so far as willingly to believe the claims of mine hostess to a lineal descent from the poet, when, unluckily for my faith, she put into my hands a play of her own composition, which set all belief in her consanguinity at defiance. From the birth-place of Shakspeare a few paces brought me to his grave. He les buried in the chancel of the parish church, a large and venerable pile, mouldering with age, but richly ornamented. It stands on the banks of the Avon, on an embowered point, and separated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. Its situation is quiet and retired: the river runs murmuring at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the church porch. The graves are overgrown with grass; the gray tombstones, some of them nearly sunk into the earth, are half-covered with moss, which has likewise tinted the reverend old building. Small birds have built their nests among the cornices and fissures of the walls, and keep up a continual flutter and chirping; and rooks are sailing and cawing about its lofty gray spire. The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, in a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap. She In the course of my rambles I met with the graywas peculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics with headed sexton, and accompanied him home to get which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds. the key of the church. He had lived in Stratford, There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock man and boy, for eighty years, and seemed still to with which Shakspeare shot the deer, on his poach-consider himself a vigorous man, with the trivial exing exploits. There, too, was his tobacco-box; ception that he had nearly lost the use of his legs for which proves that he was a rival smoker of Sir a few years past. His dwelling was a cottage, look. Walter Raleigh; the sword also with which he ing out upon the Avon and its bordering 42dows; Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare and was a picture of that neatness, order, and com- | There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have fort, which pervade the humblest dwellings in this been written by himself, and which have in them country. A low white-washed room, with a stone something extremely awful. If they are indeed his floor carefully scrubbed, served for parlour, kitchen, own, they show that solicitude about the quiet of the and hall. Rows of pewter and earthen dishes glit- grave, which seems natural to fine sensibilities and tered along the dresser. On an old oaken table, thoughtful minds: well rubbed and polished, lay the family bible and prayer-book, and the drawer contained the family library, composed of about half a score of wellthumbed volumes. An ancient clock, that important article of cottage furniture, ticked on the opposite side of the room; with a bright warming-pan Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a hanging on one side of it, and the old man's horn- bust of Shakspeare, put up shortly after his death, handled Sunday cane on the other. The fire-place, and considered as a resemblance. The aspect is as usual, was wide and deep enough to admit a gos-pleasant and serene, with a finely arched forehead; sip knot within its jambs. In one corner sat the old and I thought I could read in it clear indications of man's grand-daughter sewing, a pretty blue-eyed that cheerful, social disposition, by which he was as girl, and in the opposite corner was a superannu- much characterized among his contemporaries as by ated crony, whom he addressed by the name of John the vastness of his genius. The inscription mentions Ange, and who, I found, had been his companion his age at the time of his decease-fifty-three years; from childhood. They had played together in in- an untimely death for the world: for what fruit fancy; they had worked together in manhood; they might not have been expected from the golden auwere now tottering about and gossiping away the tumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the evening of life; and in a short time they will prob- stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the ably be buried together in the neighbouring church-sunshine of popular and royal favour! yard. It is not often that we see two streams of existence running thus evenly and tranquilly side by side; it is only in such quiet "bosom scenes of life that they are to be met with. I had hoped to gather some traditionary anecdotes of the bard from these ancient chroniclers; but they had nothing new to impart. The long interval, during which Shakspeare's writings lay in comparative neglect, has spread its shadow over history; and it is his good or evil lot, that scarcely any thing remains to his biographers but a scanty handfull of conjectures. The sexton and his companion had been employed as carpenters, on the preparations for the celebrated Stratford jubilee, and they remembered Garrick, the prime mover of the fête, who superintended the arrangements, and who, according to the sexton, was "a short punch man, very lively and bustling." John Ange had assisted also in cutting down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree, of which he had a morsel in his pocket for sale; no doubt a sovereign quickener of literary conception. The inscription on the tombstone has not been without its effect. It has prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time contemplated. A few years since also, as some labourers were digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant space almost like an arch, through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with the remains so awfully guarded by a malediction, and lest any of the idle or the curious, or any collector of relics, should be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place for two days, until the vault was finished, and the aper ture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones; nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakspeare. Next to this grave are those of his wife, his favourite daughter Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full-length effigy of his old I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights friend John Combe, of usurious memory; on whom speak very dubiously of the eloquent dame who he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There shows the Shakspeare house. John Ange shook his are other monuments around, but the mind refuses head when I mentioned her valuable and inexhaust- to dwell on any thing that is not connected with ible collection of relics, particularly her remains of Shakspeare. His idea pervades the place the whole the mulberry-tree; and the old sexton even ex-pile seems but as his mausoleum. The feelings, no pressed a doubt as to Shakspeare having been born longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here indulge in her house. I soon discovered that he looked in perfect confidence: other traces of him may be upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to the false or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and poet's tomb; the latter having comparatively but absolute certainty. As I trod the sounding pavefew visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the ment, there was something intense and thrilling in very outset, and mere pebbles make the stream of the idea, that, in very truth, the remains of Shaktruth diverge into different channels, even at the speare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was a fountain-head. long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place; and as I passed through the churchyard, I plucked a branch from one of the yew-trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford. We approached the church through the avenue of limes, and entered by a Gothic porch, highly ornamented with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and embel- I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim's lishments superior to those of most country churches. devotion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat There are several ancient monuments of nobility of the Lucys at Charlecot, and to ramble through the and gentry, over some of which hang funeral es- park where Shakspeare, in company with some of cutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the roysters of Stratford, committed his youthful of the walls. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chan- fence of deer-stealing. In this hairbrained exploit cel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall we are told that he was taken prisoner, and carried elms wave before the pointed windows, and the to the keeper's lodge, where he remained all night in Avon, which runs at a short distance from the doleful captivity. When brought into the presence walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat of Sir Thomas Lucy, his treatment must have been stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. | galling and humiliating; for it so wrought upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade, which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecot.* This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the Knight so incensed him, that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakspeare did not wait to brave the united puissance of a Knight of the Shire and a country attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the Avon, and his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and, finally, wrote for the stage; and thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indifferent wool-comber, and the world gained an immortal poet. He retained, however, for a long time, a sense of the harsh treatment of the Lord of Charlecot, and revenged himself in his writings; but in the sportive way of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the original of Justice Shallow, and the satire is slily fixed upon him by the Justice's armorial bearings, which, like those of the Knight, had white lucest in the quarterings. Various attempts have been made by his biographers to soften and explain away this early transgression of the poet; but I look upon it as one of those thoughtless exploits natural to his situation and turn of mind. Shakspeare, when young, had doubtless all the wildness and irregularity of an ardent, undisciplined, and undirected genius. The poetic temperament has naturally something in it of the vagabond. When left to itself, it runs loosely and wildly, and delights in every thing eccentric and licentious. It is often a turn-up of a die, in the gambling freaks of fate, whether a natural genius shall turn out a great rogue or a great poet; and had not Shakspeare's mind fortunately taken a literary bias, he might have as daringly transcended all civil, as he has all dramatic laws. I have little doubt that, in early life, when running, like an unbroken colt, about the neighbourhood of Stratford, he was to be found in the company of all kinds of odd and anomalous characters; that he associated with all the madcaps of the place, and was one of those unlucky urchins, at mention of whom old men shake their heads, and predict that they will one day come to the gallows. To him the poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park was doubtless like a foray to a Scottish Knight, and struck his eager, and as yet untamed, imagination, as something delightfully adventurous.‡ The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly interesting from being connected with this whimsical but eventful circumstance in the scanty history of the bard. As the house stood at The following is the only stanza extant of this lampoon : Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it. He thinks himself great; Yet an asse in his state, We allow by his ears with but asses to mate. + The luce is a pike or jack, and abounds in the Avon, about Charlecot. little more than three miles' distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from which Shakspeare must have derived his earliest ideas of rural imagery. The country was yet naked and leafless; but English scenery is always verdant, and the sudden change in the temperature of the weather was surprising in its quickening effects upon the landscape. It was inspiring and animating to witness this first awakening of spring; to feel its warm breath stealing over the senses; to see the moist mellow earth beginning to put forth the green sprout and the tender blade; and the trees and shrubs, in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the promise of returning foliage and flower. The cold snow-drop, that little borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its chaste white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The bleating of the new-dropt lambs was faintly heard from the fields The sparrow twittered about the thatched eaves and budding hedges; the robin threw a livelier note into his late querulous wintry strain; and the lark, springing up from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the bright fleecy cloud, pouring forth torrents of melody. As I watched the little songster, mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere speck on the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still filled with his music, it called to mind Shakspeare's exquisite little song in Cymbeline: Hark! hark! the lark at heav'n's gate sings, His steeds to water at those springs, And winking mary-buds hegia To ope their golden eyes; Indeed, the whole country about here is poetic ground: every thing is associated with the idea of Shakspeare. Every old cottage that I saw, I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he had acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners, and heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he has woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we are told, it was a popular amusement in winter evenings "to sit round the fire, and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, and friars.” My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which made a variety of the most fanciful doublings and windings through a wide and fertile valley: sometimes glittering from among willows, legs to carry them off the field. They had scarcely marched a mile, when, their legs failing them, they were forced to lie down under a crab-tree, where they passed the night. It is still st nding, and goes by the name of Shakspeare's tree. In the morning his companions awaked the bard, and proposed returning to Bedford, but he declined, saying he had had enough, having drunk with Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, "The villages here alluded to," says Ireland. "still bear the A proof of Shakspeare's random habits and associates in his youthful days may be found in a traditionary anecdote, picked up for their skill on the pipe and tabor; Hillborough is now called epithets thus given them: the people of Pebworth are still famed at Stratford by the elder Ireland, and mentioned in his "Pictur-Haunted Hillborough; and Grafton is famous for the poverty of its esque Views on the Avon." About seven miles from Stratford lies the thirsty little market town of Bedford, famous for its alc. Two societies of the village yeomanry used to meet, under the appellation of the Bedford topers, and to challenge the lovers of good ale of the neighbouring villages, to a contest of drinking. Among others, the people of Stratford were called out to prove the strength of their heads; and in the number of the champions was Shakspeare, who, in spite of the proverb. that they who drink beer will think beer," was as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack. The chivalry of Stratford was staggered at the first onset, ard sounded a retreat while they had yet soil." Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," enumerates a host of these fire-side fancies. "And they have so fraid us with bull-Leggars, spirits, witches. urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens. kit with the can sticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changelings, incubus, Robin-good-fellow, the sporne, the nare, the man in the oke, the hellwaine, the fier drake, the puckie, Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom Tumbler, toneless, and such other bugs, that we were afraid of our own shadowes." which fringed its borders; sometimes disappearing among groves, or beneath green banks; and sometimes rambling out into full view, and making an azure sweep round a slope of meadow land. This beautiful bosom of country is called the Vale of the Red Horse. A distant line of undulating blue hills seems to be its boundary, whilst all the soft intervening landscape lies in a manner enchained in the silver links of the Avon. I had now come in sight of the house. it is a large building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style of Queen Elizabeth's day, having been built in the first year of her reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its original state, and may be considered a fair specimen of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of those days. A great gateway opens from the park into a kind of court-yard in front of the house, ornamented with a After pursuing the road for about three miles, I grass-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway turned off into a foot-path, which led along the bor-is in imitation of the ancient barbican; being a kind ders of fields and under hedge-rows to a private gate of the park; there was a stile, however, for the benefit of the pedestrian; there being a public right of way through the grounds. I delight in these hospitable estates, in which every one has a kind of property --at least as far as the foot-path is concerned. It in some measure reconciles a poor man to his lot, and what is more, to the better lot of his neighbour, thus to have parks and pleasure-grounds thrown open for his recreation. He breathes the pure air as freely, and lolls as luxuriously under the shade, as the lord of the soil; and if he has not the privilege of calling all that he sees his own, he has not, at the same time, the trouble of paying for it, and keeping it in order. I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. The wind sounded solemnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their hereditary nests in the tree tops. The eye ranged through a long lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue; and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the opening. There is something about these stately old avenues that has the effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended similarity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long duration, and of having had their origin in a period of time with which we associate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also the long-settled dignity, and proudly concentrated independence of an ancient family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaces of modern gentry, that " money could do much with stone and mortar, but, thank Heaven, there was no such thing as suddenly building up an avenue of oaks." It was from wandering in early life among this rich scenery, and about the romantic solitudes of the adjoining park of Fullbroke, which then formed a part of the Lucy estate, that some of Shakspeare's commentators have supposed he derived his noble forest meditations of jacques, and the enchanting woodland pictures in "As you like it." It is in lonely wanderings through such scenes, that the mind drinks deep but quiet draughts of inspiration, and becomes intensely sensible of the beauty and majesty of nature. The imagination kindles into reverie and rapture; vague but exquisite images and ideas keep breaking upon it; and we revel in a mute and almost incommunicable luxury of thought. It was in some such mood, and perhaps under one of those very trees before me, which threw their broad shades over the grassy banks and quivering waters of the Avon, that the poet's fancy may have sallied forth into that little song which breathes the very soul of a rural voluptuary · Under the green-wood tree, Come hither, come hither, come hither, No enemy, of outpost, and flanked by towers; though evidently for mere ornament, instead of defence. The front of the house is completely in the old style; with stone shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stonework, and a portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock. The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently sloping bank, which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders; and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I contemplated the venerable old mansion, I called to mind Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode, and the affected indifference and real vanity of the latter: "Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling and a rich. John:-marry, good air." Whatever may have been the joviality of the old mansion in the days of Shakspeare, it had now an air of stillness and solitude. The great iron gateway that opened into the court-yard was locked; there was no show of servants bustling about the place; the deer gazed quietly at me as I passed, being ne longer harried by the moss-troopers of Stratford. The only sign of domestic life that I met with, was a white cat, stealing with wary look and stealthy pace towards the stables, as if on some nefarious expedition. I must not omit to mention the carcass of a scoundrel crow which I saw suspended against the barn wall, as it shows that the Lucys still inherit that lordly abhorrence of poachers, and maintain that rigorous exercise of territorial power which was sc strenuously manifested in the case of the bard. After prowling about for some time, I at length found my way to a lateral portal, which was the every-day entrance to the mansion. I was courteously received by a worthy old housekeeper, who, with the civility and communicativeness of her order, showed me the interior of the house. The greater part has undergone alterations, and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living: there is a fine ole oaken staircase; and the great hall, that noble feature in an ancient manor-house, still retains much of the appearance it must have had in the days of Shakspeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty; and at one end is a gallery, in which stands an organ. The weapons and trophies of the chase, which formerly adorned the hall of a country gentleman, have made way for family portraits. There is a wide hospitable fire-place, calculated for an ample oldfashioned wood fire, formerly the rallying place of winter festivity. On the opposite side of the hall is the huge Gothic bow-window, with stone shafts, which looks out upon the court-yard. Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial bearings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being dated in 1558. I was delighted to observe in the quarterings the three white luces by which the character of Sir Thomas was first identified with that of Justice Shallow. They are mentioned in the first "Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a StarChamber matter of it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esq. scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor, where the Jus-speare was brought before him. As I like to deck tice is in a rage with Falstaff for having "beaten his out pictures for my own entertainment, I pleased mymen, killed his deer, and broken into his lodge." self with the idea that this very hall had been the The poet had no doubt the offences of himself and scene of the unlucky bard's examination on the his comrades in mind at the time, and we may sup- morning after his captivity in the lodge. I fancied pose the family pride and vindictive threats of the to myself the rural potentate, surrounded by his puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the pompous body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving indignation of Sir Thomas. men with their badges; while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and chapfallen, in the custody of game-keepers, huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country clowns. I fancied bright faces of curious house-maids peeping from the half-opened doors; while from the gallery the fair daughters of the Knight leaned gracefully forward, eyeing the youthful prisoner with that pity "that dwells in womanhood."-Who would have thought that this poor varlet, thus trembling before the brief authority of a country 'Squire, and the sport of rustic boors, was soon to become the delight of princes; the theme of all tongues and ages; the dictator to the human mind; and was to confer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature and a lampoon! "Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram. "Shallow, Ay, cousin Šlender, and custalorum. "Slender. Ay, and ratalorum too, and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, Armigero. Shallow. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years. Slender. All his successors gone before him have done 't, and all his ancestors that come after him may; they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. "Shallow. The council shall hear it; it is a riot. "Evans. It is not meet the council hear of a riot; there is no fear of Get in a riot: the council, hear you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your vizaments in that. Shall w. Ha! o' my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it!" Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait by Sir Peter Lely of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty of the time of Charles the Second: the old housekeeper shook her head as she pointed to the picture, and informed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the family estate, among which was that part of the park where Shakspeare and his comrades had killed the deer. The lands thus lost have not been entirely regained by the family, even at the present day. It is but justice to this recreant dame to confess that she had a surpassingly fine hand and arm. The picture which most attracted my attention was a great painting over the fire-place, containing likenesses of Sir Thomas Lucy and his family, who inhabited the hall in the latter part of Shakspeare's lifetime. I at first thought that it was the vindictive knight himself, but the housekeeper assured me that it was his son; the only likeness extant of the former being an effigy upon his tomb in the church of the neighbouring hamlet of Charlecot. The picture gives a lively idea of the costume and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet; white shoes with roses in them; and has a peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender would say, "a cane-coloured beard." His lady is seated on the opposite side of the picture in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group; a hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, and one of the children holds a bow ;all intimating the knight's skill in hunting, hawking, and archery-so indispensable to an accomplished gentleman in those days.* I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall had disappeared; for I had hoped to meet with the stately elbow-chair of carved oak, in which the country 'Squire of former days was wont to sway the sceptre of empire over his rural domains; and in which it might be presumed the redoubted Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state, when the recreant Shak Bishop Earle, speaking of the country gentleman of his time, elserves, his housekeeping is seen much in the different families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels; and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly ambitious to seem delighted with the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr. Hastings, remarks, he kept all sorts of hounds that run, buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and had hawks of all kinds both long and short winged. His great hall was commonly strewed with marrow-bones, and full of hawk perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. On a broad hearth, paved with brick, lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels." I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I felt inclined to visit the orchard and arbour where the Justice treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin Silence "to a last year's pippen of his own graffing, with a dish of carraways; but I had already spent so much of the day in my rambling, that I was obliged to give up any farther investigations. When about to take my leave, I was gratified by the civil entreaties of the housekeeper and butler, that I would take some refreshment-an instance of good old hospitality, which I grieve to say we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt it is a virtue which the present representative of the Lucys inherits from his ancestors; for Shakspeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice Shallow importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing instances to Falstaff. "By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not away to-night will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused Some pigeons, Davy; a couple of short-legged hens; a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William Cook."" I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had become so completely possessed by the imaginary scenes and characters connected with it, that I seemed to be actually living among them. Every thing brought them as it were before my eyes; and as the door of the dining-room opened, I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his favourite ditty: ""Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, On returning to my inn, I could not but reflect on the singular gift of the poet; to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of nature; to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this "workingday world" into a perfect fairy land. He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of Shakspeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all, |