the murder of Banquo is to be done. The very time is at hand : "Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood."* The naturalist has not only heard the "drowsy hums" of the beetle as he wandered in the evening twilight, but he has traced the insect to its hiding-place. The poet associates the fact with a great lesson,-to be content in obscure safety : "Often, to our comfort, shall we find The sharded beetle in a safer hold Let it not be forgotten that the young Shakspere had to make himself a naturalist. Books of accurate observation there were none to guide him; for the popular works of natural history, of which there were very few, were full of extravagant fables and vague descriptions. Mr. Douce has told us that Shakspere was extremely well acquainted with one of these works-" Batman uppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, 1582;" and he has ascertained that the original price of this volume was eight shillings. But Shakspere did not go to Bartholomeus or to Batman (who made large additions to the original work from Gesner), for his truths in natural history. Mr. Douce has cited many passages in his "Illustrations," in which he traces Shakspere to Bartholomeus. We have gone carefully through the volumes where these are scattered up and down, and we find a remarkable circumstance unnoticed by Mr. Douce, that these passages, with scarcely an exception, refer to the vulgar errors of natural history which Shakspere has transmuted into never-dying poetry. It is here that we find the origin of the toad which wears "a precious jewel in his head;" of the phoenix of Arabia ;§ of the basilisk that kills the innocent gazer;|| of the unlicked bear-whelp. But the truths of natural history which we constantly light upon in Shakspere were all essentially derived from his own observation. There is a remarkable instance in his discrimination between the popular belief and the scientific truth in his notice of the habits of the cuckoo. The Fool in Lear expresses the popular belief in a proverbial sentence:— "For you trou, nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long Worcester, in his address to Henry IV., expresses the scientific fact without the vulgar exaggeration,—a fact unnoticed till the time of Dr. Jenner by any writer but the naturalist William Shakspere : 66 Being fed by us, you used us so That even our love durst not come near your sight." The noble description of the commonwealth of bees in Henry V. was suggested, in all probability, by a similar description in Lyly's "Euphues." But Shakspere's description not only displays the wonderful accuracy of his observation, in subser "Macbeth," Act III., Scene II. "Cymbeline," Act III. Scene III. vience to the poetical art, but the unerring discrimination of his philosophy. Lyly makes his bees exercise the reasoning faculty-choose a king, call a parliament, consult for laws, elect officers; Shakspere says "they have a king and officers ;" and he refers their operations to "a rule in nature.” The same accuracy that he brought to the observation of the workings of nature in the fields, he bestows upon the assistant labours of art in the garden. The fine dialogue between the old gardener at Langley and the servants, is full of technical information. The great principles of horticultural economy, pruning and weeding, are there as clearly displayed as in the most anti-poetical of treatises. We have the crab-tree slip grafted upon noble stock (the reverse of the gardener's practice) in one play: in another we have the luxurious "scions put in wild and savage stock."+ A writer in a technical periodical work seriously maintains that Shakspere was a professional gardener. This is better evidence of the poet's horticultural acquirements than Steevens's pert remark, "Shakspeare seems to have had little knowledge in gardening."§ Shakspere's philosophy of the gardener's art is true of all art. It is the great Platonic belief which raises art into something much higher than a thing of mere imitation, showing the great informing spirit of the universe working through man, as through any other agency of his will: 1 Perdita's flowers! who can mention them, and not think of the wonderful union of the accuracy of the naturalist with the loveliest images of the poet? It has been well remarked that in Milton's "Lycidas" we have "among vernal flowers many of those which are the offspring of Midsummer;" but Shakspere distinguishes his groups, assorting those of the several seasons. Perhaps in the whole compass of poetry there is no such perfect combination of elegance and truth as the passage in which Perdita bestows her gifts-parts of which are of such surpassing loveliness, that the sense aches at them : "O, Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall * "Henry VI.," Part II., Act III., Scene II. "Henry V.," Act III., Scene v "The Gardener's Chronicle," May 29, 1841. § Note on "As You Like It," Act III., Scene II. ¶ Patterson's "Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays." From Dis's waggon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take Of all the objects of creation it is in flowers that Shakspere's genius appears most to revel and luxuriate; but the precision with which he seizes upon their characteristics distinguishes him from all other poets. A word is a description. The "pale primrose," the "azur'd harebell," are the flowers to be strewn upon Fidele's grave; but how is their beauty elevated when the one is compared to her face, and the other to her veins! Shakspere perhaps caught the sweetest image of his sweetest song from the lines of Chaucer which we have recently quoted; where we have the lark, and the fiery Phoebus drying the silver drops on the leaves. But it was impossible to have translated this fine passage, as Shakspere has done, without the minute observation of the naturalist working with the invention of the poet : "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies."† The rosebud shrivels and dies, and the cause is disregarded by a common observer' The poetical naturalist points out "the bud bit by an envious worm." Again, the microscope of the poet sees "the crimson drops i' the bottom of a cowslip," and the observation lies in the cells of his memory till it becomes a comparison of exquisite delicacy in reference to the "cinque-spotted" mark of the sleeping Imogen. But the eye which observes everything is not only an eye for beauty, as it looks upon the produce of the fields; it has the sense of utility as strong as that which exists in the calculations of the most anti-poetical. The mad Lear's garland is a catalogue of the husbandman's too luxuriant enemies : "Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, Who could have conceived the noble picture in Henry V. of a country wasted by war, but one who from his youth upward had been familiar, even to the minutest practice, with all that is achieved by cultivation, and all that is lost by neglect ;— who had seen the wild powers of nature held in subjection to the same producing power under the guidance of art ;—who had himself assisted in this best conquest of man ? "Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth "Winter's Tale," Act IV., Scene III. "Cymbeline," Act II., Scene III. § "King Lear," Act IV., Scene IV. "Romeo and Juliet," Act I., Scene I. Even the technical words of agriculture find their place in his language of poetry :— "Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd."* He goes into the woods of his own Arden, and he associates her oaks with the sublimest imagery; but still the oak loses nothing of its characteristics. "The thing of courage, as roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise," Again : "When splitting winds Make flexible the knees of knotted oaks." † "Merciful Heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Even the woodman's economy, who is careful not to exhaust the tree that furnishes him fuel, becomes an image to show, by contrast, the impolicy of excessive taxation: "Why, we take From every tree, lop, bark, and part o' the timber; It is in these woods that he has studied the habits of the "joiner squirrel," who makes Mab's chariot out of an "empty hazel-nut."|| Here the active boy was no doubt the "venturous fairy" that would seek the "squirrel's hoard, and fetch new nuts."¶ Here he has watched the stock-dove sitting upon her nest, and has stored the fact in his mind till it becomes one of the loveliest of poetical comparisons: What book-fed poet could have chosen a homely incident of country life as the aptest illustration of an assembly suddenly scattered by their fears ?— "Russet-painted choughs, many in sort, Rising and cawing at the gun's report, Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky."†† The poet tells us and we believe him as much as if a Pliny or a Gesner had written it-that The boy has climbed to the kite's nest, and there perchance has found some of the gear that "maidens bleach;" the discovery becomes a saying for Autolycus :"When the kite builds, look to lesser linen."§§ In all this practical part of Shakspere's education it is emphatically true that the boy "is father of the man." || || "Henry VI.," Part II., Act III., Scene 1. "Troilus snd Cressida," Act I., Scene III. §" Henry VIII.," Act I., Scene II. ¶"A Midsummer-Night's Dream," Act IV., Scene 1. tt "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," Act III., Scene II. §§ "Winter's Tale," Act IV., Scene II. Wordsworth. "Measure for Measure," Act II., Scene II. "Romeo and Juliet," Act I., Scene IV. 'Hamlet," Act v., Scene 1. "Macbeth," Act IV., Scene II. L Shakspere, in an early play, has described his native river : "The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays, The solitary boat of the young poet may be fancied floating down this "current." There is not a sound to disturb his quiet, but the gentle murmur when "the waving sedges play with wind." + As the boat glides unsteered into some winding nook, the swan ruffles his proud crest; and the quick eye of the naturalist sees his mate deep hidden in the reeds and osiers : "So doth the swan her downy cygnets save, Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings." + Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford; a poet's river in its beauty and its peacefulness. It is disturbed with no sound of traffic; it holds its course unvexed by man through broad meadows and wooded acclivities, which for generations seem to have been dedicated to solitude. All the great natural features of the river must have suffered little change since the time of Shakspere. Inundations in some places may have widened the channel; osier islands may have grown up where there was once a broad stream. But we here look upon the same scenery upon which he looked, as truly as we gaze upon the same blue sky, and see its image in the same glassy water. As we unmoor our boat from the fields near Bishop's Hampton,§ we look back upon the church embosomed in lofty trees. The "Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act II., Scene VII. "Henry VI.," Part I., Act v., Scene III. Induction to "Taming of the Shrew." § The old name for Hampton Lucy. |