man appears to have made some collections for the biography of our English poets, and, under the name Shakspere, he gives the dates of his birth and death. But Davies, who added notes to his friend's manuscripts, affords us the following piece of information: "He was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits; particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipped, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great, that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three louses rampant for his arms." The accuracy of this chronicler, as to events supposed to have happened a hundred years before he wrote, may be inferred from his correctness in what was accessible to him. Justice Clodpate is a new character; and the three louses rampant have diminished strangely from the "dozen white luces" of Master Slender. In Mr. Davies's account we have no mention of the ballad-through which, according to Rowe, the young poet revenged his "ill-usage." But Capell, the editor of Shakspere, found a new testimony to that fact: "The writer of his 'Life,' the first modern (Rowe), speaks of a 'lost ballad,' which added fuel, he says, to the knight's before-conceived anger, and 'redoubled the prosecution;' and calls the ballad the first essay of Shakespere's poetry one stanza of it, which has the appearance of genuine, was put into the editor's hands many years ago by an ingenious gentleman (grandson of its preserver), with this account of the way in which it descended to him' Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and died in the year 1703, aged upwards of ninety, remembered to have heard from several old people at Stratford the story of Shakespere's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park; and their account of it agreed with Mr. Rowe's, with this addition, that the ballad written against Sir Thomas by Shakespere was stuck upon his park-gate, which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him. Mr. Jones had put down in writing the first stanza of the ballad, which was all he remembered of it, and Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it in writing." This, then, is the entire evidence as to the deer-stealing tradition. According to Rowe, the young Shakspere was engaged more than once in robbing a park, for which he was prosecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy; he made a ballad upon his prosecutor, and then, being more severely pursued, fled to London. According to Davies, he was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits; for which he was often whipped, sometimes imprisoned, and at last forced to fly the country. According to Jones, the tradition of Rowe was correct as to robbing the park; and the obnoxous ballad being stuck upon the park-gate, a lawyer of Warwick was authorized to prosecute the offender. The tradition is thus full of contradictions upon the face of it. It necessarily would be so, for each of the witnesses speaks of circumstances that must have happened a hundred years before his time. The state of the law, as to the offence for which William Shakspere is said to have been prosecuted; the state of public opinion, as to the offence; and the position of Sir Thomas Lucy, as regarded his immediate neighbours-all these circumstances go very far to destroy the credibility of the tradition. Charlcote, then, shall not, at least by us, be sur rounded by unpleasant associations in connexion with the name of Shakspere. It is, perhaps, the most interesting locality connected with that name; for in its great features it is essentially unchanged. There stands, with slight alteration, and those in good taste, the old mansion as it was reared in the days of Elizabeth. A broad avenue leads to its fine gateway, which opens into the court and the principal entrance. We would desire to people that hall with kindly inmates; to imagine the fine old knight, perhaps a little too puritanical, indeed, in his latter days, living there in peace and happiness with his family; merry as he ought to have been with his first wife, Jocosa (whose English name, Joyce, sounded not quite so pleasant), and whose epitaph, by her husband, is honourable alike to the deceased and to the survivor: "All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion, most sound; in love to her husband, most faithful and true; in friendship, most constant; to what in trust was committed to her, most secret; in wisdom, excelling; in governing her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her, most rare and singular. A great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none, unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled, of any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly: "Set down by him that best did know What hath been written to be true.-Thomas Lucy." We can picture Sir Thomas planting the second avenue, which leads obliquely across the park from the great gateway to the porch of the parish church. It is an avenue too narrow for carriages, if carriages then had been common; and the knight and his lady walk in stately guise along that grassy pathway, as the Sunday bells summon them to meet their humble neighbours in a place where all are equal. Charlcote is full of rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue may, perhaps, be of a later date than the age of Elizabeth; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first built. There may we still lie "Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out and doubt not that there was the place to which "A poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish." There may we still see "A careless herd, Full of the pasture," leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh fields and low branches whereon to browse. 66 235 infant Shakspere on the winding Avon's willowed banks." Thomas Warton has painted the scenery of the Avon and its associations with a bright pencil: : The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest Joseph Warton describes fair Fancy discovering the objects. Whatever is new about it-and most of the cottages are new-looks like a restoration of what was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to preserve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote; but the more important have probably been swept away. In the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which we hold to be one of Shakspere's very early plays, he has denoted some of the characteristics of the Avon of his boyhood: "The current, that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; But, when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays, Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford; 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. The Avon necessarily derives its chief interest from its associations with Shakspere. His contemporaries connected his fame with his native river : "Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were, To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, So wrote Jonson in his manly lines, "To the Memory "Beware, delighted poets, when you sing, "Avon, thy rural views, thy pastures wild, Here first, at Fancy's fairy-circled shrine, Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall; The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall. Before me Pity seems to stand, A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er. Pale Terror leads the visionary band, And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood." † The well-known lines of Gray are among his happiest efforts : "Far from the sun and summer gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, 'This pencil take,' she said, 'whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."" These quotations sufficiently show that the presiding genius of the Avon is Shakspere. But even without this paramount association, the river, although little. visited, abounds with picturesque scenery and interesting objects. Shottery, the prettiest of hamlets, is scarcely a mile from Stratford. Here, in all probability, dwelt one who was to have an important influence upon the destiny of the boy-poet. We cannot say, absolutely, that Anne Hathaway, the future wife of William Shakspere, was of Shottery; but the prettiest of In Remembrance of Master William Shakspere. Ode. + Monody, written near Stratford-upon-Avon. The very early marriage of the young man, with one "As the most forward bud 66 This is the common consequence of precocious mar riages; but we are not therefore to conclude that “the young and tender wit" of our Shakspere was "turned to folly"-that "his forward bud" was eaten by the canker"-that "his verdure" was lost "even in the prime" by his marriage with Anne Hathaway before he was nineteen. The influence which this marriage. must have had upon his destinies was no doubt considerable; but it is too much to assume, as it has been assumed, that it was an unhappy influence. All that we really know of Shakspere's family life warrants the contrary supposition. maidens (for the veracious antiquarian boldly says there is a tradition that she was eminently beautiful) would have fitly dwelt in the pleasantest of hamlets. Shakspere's marriage bond, which was discovered a few years since, has set at rest all doubt as to the name and residence of his wife. She is there described as Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, maiden. Rowe, in his 'Life,' says:"Upon his leaving school he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to settle in the world, after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." At the hamlet of Shottery, which is in the parish of Stratford, the Hathaways had been settled forty years before the period of Shakspere's marriage; for in the Warwickshire Surveys, in the time of Philip and Mary, it is recited that John Hathaway held property at Shottery. by copy of court-roll, dated 20th of April, 34th of Henry VIII. (1543).* The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard; and the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept in an action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1579, in which John Shakspere is his bondman. Before the discovery of the marriage-bond Malone had found a confirmation of the traditional account that the maiden name of Shakspere's wife was Hathaway; for Lady Barnard, the grand-daughter of Shakspere, makes bequests in her will to the children of Thomas Hathaway, "her kinsman." But Malone doubts whether there were not other Hathaways than those of Shottery, residents in the town of Stratford, and not in the hamlet included in the parish. This is possible. But, on the other hand, the description in the marriage-"all that capital messuage or tenement in Stratford, bond of Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not of Shottery; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the parish of the person described. Tradition, always valuable when it is not opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways at Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick purchased relics out of it at the time of the Stratford Jubilee; Samuel Ireland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspere's courting-chair; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heirloom. The house was, no doubt, once adequate to form a comfortable residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still a pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant pastures: and here the young poet might have surrendered his prudence to his affections : "As in the sweetest buds The eating canker dwells, so eatin love Inhabits in the finest wits of all."+ * The Shottery property, which was called Hewl ind, remained with the decendants of the Hathaways till 1838. Amongst the laudable objects proposed by the Shaksperian Club was the purchase and preservation of this property. + 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' Act i. Scene 1. Stratford and its neighbourhood are not less associated with the Shakspere of middle and later life. He left Stratford, as we believe, about 1585 or 1586. If he were absent alone during a portion of the year from his native place, his family probably lived under His visits to them the roof of his father and mother. would not necessarily be of rare occurrence, and of short duration. The latter part of the summer and autumn seem to have been at his disposal as far as theatrical performances were concerned, during the first In 1597 he bought seven or eight years of his career. called the New Place." In 1602 he made a large ad- doubt that she occupied the house when Queen Henrietta Maria, in 1643, coming to Stratford in royal state with a large army, resided for three weeks under this roof. The property descended to her daughter Elizabeth, first married to Mr. Thomas Nash, and afterwards to Sir Thomas Barnard. She dying without issue, New Place was sold in 1675, and was ultimately repurchased by the Clopton family. Sir Hugh Clopton, in the middle of the eighteenth century, resided there. The learned knight thoroughly repaired and beautified the place, as the local historians say, and built a modern front to it. This was the first stage of its desecration. After the death of Sir Hugh, in 1751, it was sold to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1753. interest in their pleasures and in their cares, to receive | surviving her husband fourteen years. There is little their sympathy. He is come to walk amidst his own fields, to till them, to sell their produce. His labour will be his recreation. In the activity of his body will the energy of his intellect find its support and rest. A pleasanter residence than Stratford, independent of all the early associations which endeared it to the heart of Shakspere, would have been difficult to find as a poet's resting-place. It was a town, as most old English towns were, of houses amidst gardens. Built of timber, it had been repeatedly devastated by fires. In 1594 and 1595 a vast number of houses had been thus destroyed; but they were probably small tenements and hovels. New houses arose of a better order; and one still exists, bearing the date on its front of 1596, which indicates something of the picturesque beauty of an old English country town. Shakspere's own house was no doubt one of those quaint buildings which were pulled down in the last generation, to set up four walls of plain brick, with equi-distant holes called doors and windows. His garden was a spacious one. The Avon washed its banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers. If the poet walked forth, a few steps brought him into the country: near the pretty hamlet of Shottery, by his own grounds of Bishopton, then part of the great common field of Stratford. Not far from the ancient chapel of Bishopton, of which Dugdale has preserved a representation, and the walls of which still remain, would he watch the operation of seed-time and harvest. If he passed the church and the mill, he was in the pleasant meadows that skirted the Avon on the pathway to Ludington. If he desired to cross the river, he might now do so without going round by the great bridge; for in 1599, soon after he bought New Place, the pretty foot bridge was erected, which still bears that date. His walks and his farm labours were his recreation. We believe that his higher labours continued till the end. It would be something if we could now form an exact notion of the house in which Shakspere lived; of its external appearance, its domestic arrangements. Dugdale, speaking of Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge at Stratford and repaired the chapel, says: "On the north side of this chapel was a fair house, ས ་ built of brick and timber, by the said Hugh, wherein he lived in his later days, and died." This was nearly a century before Shakspere bought the "fair house," which, in the will of Sir Hugh Clopton, is called the 'great house." Theobald says that Shakspere, "having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New Place." Malone holds that this is an error:-"I find from ancient documents that it was called New Place as early at least as 1565." The great house, having been sold out of the Clopton family, was purchased by Shakspere of William Underhill, Esq. Shakspere by his will left it to his daughter, Mrs. Hall, with remainder to her heirs male, or, in default, to her daughter Elizabeth and her heirs male, or the heirs male of his daughter Judith. Mrs. Hall died in 1649; The total destruction of New Place in 1757, by its new possessor, is difficult to account for upon any ordinary principles of action. Malone thus relates the story:- "The Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, resided in it but a few years, in consequence of a disagreement with the inhabitants of Stratford. Every house in that town that is let or valued at more than 40s. a-year is assessed by the overseers, according to its worth and the ability of the occupier, to pay a monthly rate toward the maintenance of the poor. As Mr. Gastrell resided part of the year at Lichfield, he thought he was assessed too highly; but being very properly compelled by the magistrates of Stratford to pay the whole of what was levied on him, on the principle that his house was occupied by his servants in his absence, he peevishly declared, that that house should never be assessed again; and soon afterwards pulled it down, sold the materials, and left the town. Wishing, as it should seem, to be 'damn'd to everlasting fame,' he had some time before cut down Shakspere's celebrated mulberry-tree, to save himself the trouble of showing it to those whose admiration of our great poet led them to visit the poetic ground on which it stood." The cutting down of the mulberrytree seems to have been regarded as the chief offence in Mr. Gastrell's own generation. His wife was a sister of Johnson's correspondent, Mrs. Aston. the death of Mr. Gastrell, his widow resided at Lichfield; and in 1776, Boswell, in company with Johnson, dined with the sisters. Boswell on this occasion says― "I was not informed till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrell's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Gothic barbarity cut down Shakspere's mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts of our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege." The mulberry-tree was cut down in 1756; was sold for firewood; and the bulk of it was purchased by a Mr. Thomas Sharpe, of Stratford-upon-Avon, clock and watchmaker, who made a solemn affidavit some years afterwards, that out of a sincere veneration for the memory of its celebrated planter he had the greater part of it conveyed to his own premises, and worked it into After curious toys and useful articles. The destruction of the mulberry-tree, which the previous possessor of New Place used to show with pride and veneration, enraged the people of Stratford; and Mr. Wheler tells us that he remembers to have heard his father say that, when a boy, he assisted in the revenge of breaking the reverend destroyer's windows. The hostilities were put an end to by the Rev. Mr. Gastrell quitting Stratford in 1757; and, upon the principle of doing what he liked with his own, pulling the house to the ground in which Shakspere and his children had lived and died. There is no good end to be served in execrating the memory of the man who deprived the world of the pleasure of looking upon the rooms in which the author of some of the greatest productions of human intellect had lived, in the common round of humanity-of treading reverentially upon the spot hallowed by his presence and by his labours. It appears to us that this person intended no insult to the memory of Shakspere; and, indeed, thought nothing of Shakspere in the whole course of his proceedings. He bought a house, and paid for it. He wished to enjoy it in quiet. People with whom he could not sympathize intruded upon him to see the gardens and the house. In the gardens was a noble mulberry-tree. Tradition said it was planted by Shakspere; and the professional enthusiasts of Shakspere, the Garricks and the Macklins, had sat under its shade, during the occupation of one who felt that there was a real honour in the ownership of such a place. The Rev. Mr. Gastrell wanted the house and the gardens to himself. He had that strong notion of the exclusive rights of property which belongs to most Englishmen, and especially to ignorant EnglishMr. Gastrell was an ignorant man, though a clergyman. We have seen his diary, written upon a visit to Scotland three years after the pulling down of New Place. His journey was connected with some electioneering intrigues in the Scotch boroughs. He is a stranger in Scotland, and he goes into some of its most romantic districts. The scenery makes no impression upon him, as may be imagined; but he is scandalized beyond measure when he meets with a bad dinner and a rough lodging. He has just literature enough to know the name of Shakspere; but in passing through Forres and Glamis he has not the slightest association with Shakspere's Macbeth. A Captain Gordon informs his vacant mind upon some abstruse subjects, as to which we have the following record :"He assures me that the Duncan murdered at Forres was the same person that Shakspere writes of." There scarcely requires any further evidence of the prosaic character of his mind; and if there be some truth in the axiom of Shakspere, that men. being totally insensible to the feeling that he was doing any injury to any person but himself, and holding that the wood and the stone were his own, to be dealt with at his own good pleasure. It is a singular fact that no drawings or prints exist of New Place as Shakspere left it, or at any period before the alterations by Sir Hugh Clopton. It is a more singular fact that although Garrick had been there only fourteen years before the destruction, visiting the place with a feeling of veneration that might have led him and others to preserve some memorial of it, there is no trace whatever existing of what New Place was before 1757. The representation of New Place' given in some variorum editions of Shakspere, is unquestionably a forgery. A modern house is now built upon the spot. Part of the site is still a pleasant place of garden and bowling-green. Pass we to Stratford Church-the last and most solemn association with the name of Shakspere. We transcribe a brief description of this honoured pile from the Rambles by Rivers' of our friend Mr. James Thorne :-"Stratford church is a structure of large size and unusual beauty. The bold free hand of the old English architect is seen to advantage here. It is placed on the banks of the Avon, which is fringed by a few willows, and from the river our church appears of surpassing gracefulness. It has transepts, nave, chancel, and aisles, a fine tower and steeple. The tower, transepts, and some other portions are of the early English style, and very perfect; the remainder belongs to a later period, and is not less graceful. Its windows are some of them full of rich tracery. The approach from the town is by a curious avenue of limetrees. The whole appearance of the pile, with the surrounding objects, is extremely pleasing. Beautiful as is the exterior, the interior is even more so. It has very recently been fully restored, and with very great skillso great skill, indeed, is displayed, that little is left to desire. All the barbaric refinements and embellishments of the last two centuries have been swept away— would they were in every church in the country-and there is really now a fair restoration of the whole to its original state, with some little concessions, indeed, to modern requirements, but all done in the spirit of its original contrivers. The monuments in the church are many, and, besides, the monument, are interesting. One chapel is entirely filled with those of the Clopton family, and many of them are handsome. On the north of the east window is a marble tomb to the memory of John Combe, the friend of Shakspere, and whom he has been charged with libelling in some rhyme that would have disgraced a Thames waterman. The statue of Combe was executed by Gerard Johnson, the sculptor of Shakspere's bust. But all else sinks into insignificance before the monument of Shakspere, rendered, too, so doubly interesting by the likeness of him it has preserved.” The sculptor of the monument was Gerard Johnson, whose name we learn from Dugdale's correspondence, published by Mr. Hamper in 1827; and we collect |