helmed was the editor of The Northern Light.' | Seems carved from steel, the silent hills are Perhaps it would be correct to say that his rank among American poets is the same as that generally assigned to Dryden among English poets." In "The Crayon," an art journal, is found the following: "The soft brown moss, in which the vivid green of the new shoots comes like spangles, is more grateful to the feet than the clay of the road, and so I penetrate the grove. Here sprouts the fresh young wintergreen, Where its long rings unwinds the fern, Amid the creeping-pine which spreads (Street's 'American Forest Spring.') That was in Street's locality. "Also the poets know what an increase of effect they gain in describing the motion of such objects by applying a humanizing verb, as, for example, in Shake speare: But look! The morn in russet mantle clad From peak to peak the rattling crags among "And in the epithet used by Street there is a close approximation to the effect of a rain-cloud traversing the fields. And in its vapory mantle onward steps Also, in another article. "Our American Street has plied his pencil-pen upon (winter) scenes with admirable care for detail. We can select but one or two sturdy bits. Yon rustic bridge Bristles with icicles; beneath it stand "Take another. The morning rises up And lo, the dazzling picture! every tree all And the broad fields have breastplates. Over The sunshine flashes in a keen, white blaze The branches yield crisp cracklings, now and Of splendor searing eye-sight. Go abroad! then Sending a shower of rattling diamonds down "We hold that Thomson, in as many lines, never wrote so many apt expressions of natural effects." "The Crayon " also published three essays on "The Landscape Element in American Poetry," assigning to Bryant, Street, and Lowell in each essay, their place as the exponent and representative of this distinctive school of our literature. Extended specimens are given of their poetry, bringing out their picturesque qualities and pictorial beauties. Mr. Street has delivered manifold poems before the literary societies of the Colleges of New York and elsewhere, Geneva, Yale, Union, Hamilton, &c.; is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, of Cambridge Art Union, and has received the distinction of an honorary membership of the Literary Society of Nuremberg, the "Literarische Verein," of which Mr. Longfellow is likewise a recipient. From Fraser's Magazine. SHAKESPEARE'S SON-IN-LAW. A STUDY OF OLD STRATFORD. STRATFORD-UPON-AVON in the seventeenth century must have presented a very perfect type of the small midland towns which ranked in size and importance between the villages and the larger boroughs. Grouped about a fair and stately church and an old Guild-house were three or four streets of low, halftimber houses, sparingly intermixed with where Combe lived, and the ever mema few of larger size, such as the College orable New Place, environed by wellwooded gardens and gently sloping towards the river, which then, as to-day, crept lazily through the many arches of the old bridge, now "making sweet music to the enamelled stones" of the shallows, John Hall, gentleman, and Susanna Shaxpere. Who he now heavy and stagnant in the deep pools | ate vicinity possessed two physicians, beunder the shadow of the elms and wil- sides several apothecaries, and a number lows. Imagine this, with a foreground of the irregular practitioners who always of rich meadow land, dank and moist as abound in aguish districts. During the Cuyp's river banks, streaked with tall first quarter of the seventeenth century hedgerows and backed by the undulating the most noted of the Stratford doctors banks, which do duty for hills in this was John Hall, who had the luck to impart of England, and you have a picture mortalize his name by marrying the eldof Stratford as it must have appeared in est daughter of Shakespeare. The registhe time of Shakespeare. The fertility tet of Stratford, under the date of 1607, of this middle-most valley of England has the following entry among the maris unrivalled. Dry and matter-of-fact riages : Speed, who knew the district well, and was a frequent visitor at Warwick, hard by, is almost betrayed into poetry when This is the first, and well-nigh the only he comes to describe "the meandering contemporary notice of Hall. pastures, with their green mantles so em- was, and whence he came, the reasons broidered with flowers, that from Edge- which induced him to settle at Stratford, hill we behold another Eden." In our and, indeed, almost everything connected day, Hugh Miller, rambling by the Avon with his personal history, are all hidden on a hot day in June, descants with in that singular obscurity which seems to enthusiasm upon the rich aquatic vegeta-envelop all the surroundings of Shaketion, and declares that he had seen noth-speare. With the exception of a few ing in living nature which so well en- brief notices in the Corporation Records abled him to realize the luxuriant semi-relating to his holding the office of Bailiff, tropical life of the period of the coal- we hear nothing more of him until after measures. But the beauty of the land- his death, when one of his many manuscape is very treacherous. Built or bordering upon low alluvial soil, near the point where the great red sandstone district of central England begins to be overlaid by the lias, the town is very liable to floods, which year after year leave behind them a plentiful crop of fevers and agues. In the autumn months it often happens that the quiet little river, swollen by hundreds of tiny confluents from the high grounds, spreads itself along the valley into the semblance of a huge mere, and the scene from Stratford Bridge is A flat malarian world of reed and rush. The whole neighbourhood was formerly very unhealthy. If we may depend upon the entries of burials in the parish register, the death rate during the last twentyfive years of the sixteenth century must have greatly exceeded that of a modern manufacturing town; and in the very year of Shakespeare's birth, the plague is estimated to have carried off oneseventh of the inhabitants. Even in these days of improved drainage the rate is high. Out of one hundred and eightyeight deaths from natural causes in 1868, sixty-six were registered as caused by zymotic diseases. The neighbourhood of Stratford has always given employment to a number of doctors, and in the time of Elizabeth there is reason to believe that this little town or its immedi script case-books came into the hands of 66 66 Place), who in these days was miserably | Beaufou, was "godly and honest, being tormented by the "running gout," as of a noble extract." At Walcot, in Oxbecame an aged justice; and Alderman fordshire, he had a good patient in Lady Tyler, the person whose name was erased Jenkinson, who was probably the widow from the will, treated for a thoroughly of the Sir Anthony Jenkinson who was aldermanic complaint, " exceeding heat twice sent by Elizabeth as ambassador of tongue." A Mrs. Nash also, probably to Russia. Other patients residing in or the wife of Shakespeare's friend, and near Stratford were Mrs. Harvey, "very mother of the Nash who married Hall's religious; the Lady Johnson, "fair, daughter, appears in these pages, and pious, chaste;" Mr. Drayton, an excelseveral other members of the Combe and lent poet," treated for a tertian, and Underhill families. The book is nothing dosed with a pleasant mixture, which more than an ordinary case-book of the "wrought both upwards and downperiod; but in the word or two descrip- wards;" Mistress Woodward, "a maid, tive of the individual which Hall affixes very witty and well-bred, yet gibbous;" to each case we are often able to discover Mr. Fortescue, "catholic, a great drinker, the bent of his own mind, and in some of a very good habit of body, sanguine, measure to reconstruct the society of very fat;" Mr. Trap, the Puritan curate the neighbourhood. There is abundant of Stratford, "for his piety and learning evidence that his practice lay amongst second to none." the best families of the district, and he The case of George Quiney is one of was often sent for to attend patients liv- the most interesting in the book. He ing at a great distance. At Compton was the son of Shakespeare's old friend Wyniates he was in frequent attendance Richard, the writer of the one extant letupon the Marquis of Northampton, and ter addressed to Shakespeare (asking for even attended him when residing at Lud-the loan of "xxlb."), and the brother of low as Warden of the Welsh Marches. Thomas, who married the poet's second At Warwick his principal patients were daughter. In 1624 he was curate of "Baronet Puckering," son of Elizabeth's Stratford, and became Dr. Hall's patient Speaker, of the same name, "very for "grievous cough and gentle feaver, learned, much given to study, of a rare being very weak"-in other words, he and lean constitution, yet withal phleg- appears to have been in the last stage matic," and Lord Brook, the famous of a galloping consumption. The medifriend of Sir Philip Sydney, who appears cal men of our day let us off with a few to have been a confirmed invalid during doses per diem, and a pill or a potion at his latter years of retirement at Warwick. night, but in Quiney's time the doctor At Clifford, near Stratford, lived the was a tyrant from whom no hour, or Rainsfords, who are frequently mentioned even meal, was free. This unhappy in this book, notably "my lady Rainsford, young man was physicked indeed. In beautiful, and of a gallant structure of the morning he took a warm emulsion body." There can be little doubt that fasting; followed after breakfast by a Shakespeare would be a frequenter of hydromel, and at night by another emulthis house, as Sir Henry Rainsford is sion and pills. At dinner they put safsaid by Aubrey to have been a great fron into his sauce, "because profitable friend to poetry and poets. Drayton for the brest," and musk into his wine, mentions in one of his letters to Drum-"to corroborate the heart." His head mond of Hawthornden, that he is accus- was shaved, and an "emplaster" of tomed to spend three months of every summer at Clifford, and again alludes to it in the Polyolbion as — ... dear Clifford's seat, the place of health and sport, Which many a time hath been the muse's quiet port. Another patient of great consideration with Hall was Esquire Beaufou, of Guy's Cliff, "whose name I have always cause to honour." His worst illness was caused by "eating great quantity of cream at the end of his supper, about the age of seventy." His wife, the Lady twenty-eight ingredients applied to it; to be gently entreated and coaxed, but an enemy to be fiercely wrestled with and conquered. In common with most practitioners of his time, he had some very nasty and coarse medicines. He often gave "juyce of goose-dung " and frogspawn water as tonics, and one of his favourite catalpasms was, "R., a swallow's nest, straw, sticks, dung, and all." Pow-corrected to Court. Now among Hall's dered human skull and even human fat are strongly recommended, and he frequently prescribes a restorative made from snails and earth-worms. Medicine at this period was in a state of transition, and the old remedies, based for the most part upon the doctrine of sympathies and correspondences, still held their own against the new and better practice which acknowledged no authority but experiment and observation. In turning over the pages of this book we cannot fail to be struck by the great prevalence of fevers and agues. Many varieties are mentioned by Hall, such as "the malign spotted fever," ," "erratic fever," the "ungaric fever," the "new fever," and tertians and quotidians of many kinds; and as a result of these, probably, we continually meet with cases of "hypochondriac melancholy." If the cases in this book are to be taken as fairly representative, it follows that the popular ideal of the land of Shakespeare must be considerably modified. Stratford was no bucolic paradise of red-faced yokels, but a town of lean and melancholy invalids: a very nursery of Hamlets, Timons, and Jacques', scarcely ever free from It is, perhaps, worth notice that no great poet has so frequently employed images derived from these diseases. The physicist of the future who, upon some advanced stage of Mr. Buckle's thesis, will expound to our grandsons the various causes which led up to that most wonderful of all phenomena, SHAKESPEARE, will no doubt have much to say about the influence of locality in producing the morbid melancholy which, in place and out of place, seems to pervade every page of his writings. There is little doubt that Hall would be Shakespeare's attendant during his last illness, although we have no account of it in this book, the entries in which unfortunately do not commence till 1617, the year after his death, although it is by no means cer tain that Shakespeare's case would have been given, as the doctor is very chary of recording his failures. But who was Shakespeare's apothecary or surgeon? A pocket-book of Hall's is said to have once been in the possession of Malone, in which there was a statement that his name was Nason, but in another place patients we find both "John Nason of Stratford, Barber," and "Mrs. Grace Court, wife to my apothecary." In those days the lancet had scarcely been divorced from the razor, so probably both names are correct, Court being the apothecary, and Nason acting as surgeon or blood-letter. We are told by Ward, afterwards Vicar of Stratford, and also at the same time practising as a physician -a not uncommon conjunction of offices in the seventeenth century that Shakespeare died of a fever, contracted at a merry meeting with his friends Drayton and Ben Jonson.* In that year (1616) we find from the entries in the Parish Register that the fever was unusually active in Stratford, and it is probable, therefore, that we may acquit the feasting of any share in the poet's death. In the autumn of 1632 the fever again became terribly busy, in Hall's words, "killing almost all that it did infect," and the doctor himself nearly fell a victim to it. From the way in which his disorder was treated, in the first instance by himself, and afterwards, as he grew worse, by a friendly physician from Warwick and which was, in fact, the routine practice of the period we may gather a pretty accurate idea of the last hours in this world of that bright but saddened and world-worn spirit-inhabiter of that most eminent of all "eminent English bodies," which seventeen years before had lain burning and tossing in the same house, probably in the same room. The battle commenced in the usual manner, by bleeding: "8 oz. from the liver-vein; " and was followed up by active cathartics. Afterwards, at frequent intervals, they gave him a strong decoction of hartshorn, the effects of which naturally made him, as he says, "much macerated and weakened, so that I could not turn myself in bed;" and between the doses of hartshorn he took an electuary, of which the principal ingredient was the famous powder of gems, then much in vogue, and *Diary of the Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Strat ford-upon-Avon. Edited by Severn. London, 1333. Dr. Ward, like Hall, left behind him a number of MS. case-books. composed of jacynths, smardines, rubies, | to the indifference displayed by his great leaf-gold, and red coral. At night he father-in-law, exhibits a laudable anxiety swallowed potions of diascordium and for his literary progeny. "As for my syrup of poppies, and in the morning manuscripts, I would have given them to more cathartics to drive away the little Mr. Boles if he had been here, but foraslife still left. The heart gradually sink- much as he is not here present, you may, ing, a plaster of musk and aromatics was son Nash, burn them or do with them applied to the breast; and then, the what you please." Such is the wondrous poor weakened brain wandering, and the diversity of human nature, Macbeth and troubled spirit ready to pass the thresh-Othello are dismissed without a word to old, a pigeon was cut open, and its raw the tender mercies of ignorant players, flesh applied warm to the soles of his feet, and still more ignorant printers, or, for in the expectation that the vital magnet- the matter of that, to the chances of utter ism of the bird would draw away the hu- oblivion; but Dr. Hall upon his bed of mours from the head. And then! In death, is troubled about his poor little Shakespeare's case, we know how it case-books. The way in which the presended; but Dr. Hall, who must have had ent book came to be published is detailed the constitution of a horse, recovered. by Cooke in an address to the reader preThe book entirely corroborates the fixed to the first edition, but omitted in well-known and persistent Stratford tra- the succeeding impressions. At the bedition that the immediate descendants of ginning of the Civil Wars, probably in Shakespeare were Puritans, and there- 1642, Cooke, then quite a young man, was fore inclined to hold the writings of their acting as surgeon to the Roundhead troop illustrious relative in little respect. Dr. who were keeping the bridge at Stratford, Hall was certainly a Puritan of a very and quartered with him was "a mate pronounced type. The word "bodies" allied to the gentleman who wrote the upon his title-page seems to imply a reser- observations." This young man invited vation as to souls which savours of this Cooke to New Place to see the books left school, and the book abounds in the pious by Dr. Hall. Mrs. Hall showed him the phrases which at that time were certain books, and then said "she had some shibboleths of the sect. Cooke, the edi- [other] books left by one that professed tor, tells us that "he was in great fame physic with her husband, for some money. for his skill far and near; and this I take I told her that if I liked them I would to be a great sign of his ability, that give her the money again." Mrs. Hall such who spare not for cost, and they then "brought them forth, amongst which who have more than ordinary understand-there was this, with another of the auing, nay, such as hated him for his religion, often made use of him." When Dowdall visited Stratford in 1693, the earliest pilgrim who has left an account of his visit, he made friends with the parish clerk, who was then upwards of eighty years old. While viewing the church, the old man pointed to Shakespeare's tomb, and said emphatically, "He was the best of his family"! This has always seemed to us the most expressive testimony, and, from the old town gossip's point of view, speaks volumes, plainly telling of a bright period of generous living at the New Place, too soon followed by a time of darkness, when cakes and ale were not. thor's, both intended for the press. I being acquainted with Mr. Hall's hand, told her that one or two of them were her husband's, and showed them to her. She denied, I affirmed, till I perceived she began to be offended, and at last I returned her the money." This is the only scrap of intelligence, save the inscription upon her monument, which time has left us about Shakespeare's daughter, and it must be allowed that it does not show her in a pleasant light. Mistress Hall was certainly wise in a worldly sense, as well as "wise to salvation." We may, perhaps, however, derive from the incident a consolatary inference. The tradition mongers have always delighted to rack John Hall died in November 1635. By our imagination with visions of the burnhis nuncupative will, made on the day ing of Shakespeare's manuscripts at the of his death, he left his "study of books" hands of a Puritanic and unsympathetic -and amongst these, unless they had kindred. The fair bargainer of the above undergone a similar sifting to that be-scene was not the woman to dispose of stowed upon Don Quixote's, would be the her father's manuscripts - if there were priceless Shakespeare Library-to his any without a proper consideration, son-in-law Nash, "to dispose of them as and the probability seems to be that you see good," and, in striking contrast Heminge and Condell would get them all. Ma... |