The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility." *

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
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle." §

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;
And, though we leave it with a root, thus hack'd
The air will drink the sap." ||

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 :

"Anon as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,

His silence will sit drooping." ‡‡

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?

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."‡

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;

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,

With willing sport, to the wild ocean." §

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 :-

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 once a broad stream. But we islands may have grown up where there was here look upon the same scenery upon which he looked, as truly as we gaze As we upon the same blue sky, and see its image in the same glassy water. unmoor our boat from the fields near Bishop's Hampton,* we look back upon the church embosomed in lofty trees. The church is new; but it stands upon

the same spot as the ancient church: its associations are the same. We glide by Charlcote. The house has been enlarged; its antique features somewhat improved; but it is essentially the same as the Charlcote of Shakspere. We pass its sunny lawns, and are soon amidst the unchanging features of nature. We are between deep wooded banks. Even the deer, who swim from shore to shore where the river is wide and open, are prevented invading these quiet deeps. The old turrets rising amidst the trees alone tell us that human habitation is at hand. A little onward, and we lose all trace of that culture which is ever changing the face of nature. There is a high bank called Old Town, where perhaps men and women, with their joys and sorrows, once abided. It

The old name for Hampton Lucy.

:

is colonized by rabbits. The elder-tree drops its white blossoms luxuriantly over their brown burrows. The golden cups of the yellow water-lilies lie brilliantly beneath on their green couches. The reed-sparrow and the willowwren sing their small songs around us a stately heron flaps his heavy wing above. The tranquillity of the place is almost solemn; and a broad cloud deepens the solemnity, by throwing for a while the whole scene into shadow. We have a book with us that Shakspere might have looked upon in the same spot two hundred and sixty years ago; a new book then, but even then seeking to go back into the past, in the antique phraseology adopted by the young author. It is the first work of Spenser,- The Shepherd's Calendar,' originally

printed in 1579. Let us pause a little upon its pages and thence look back also with a brief glance, at the poetical models in his own language which were open to the study of one who, without models, was destined to found the greatest school of poetry which the world had seen.

Spenser, displeased with the artificial character of the literature of his own early time, its mythological affectations, its mincing and foreign phraseology, thought to infuse into it a more healthy tone by familiarizing the court of Elizabeth with the diction of the age of Edward III. The attempt was not successful. His friend and editor, E. K., indeed says,-" In my opinion it is one especial praise, of many which are due to this poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the only cause that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough of prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both."* But even Sidney, to whom the work was dedicated, will not admit the principle which Spenser was endeavouring to establish : — “‹ The

Shepherd's Calendar' hath much poetry in his eclogues worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazarius in Italian, did affect it." Yet we can well imagine that The Shepherd's Calendar,' dropping in the way of the young recluse of Stratford, must have been exceedingly welcome. "Colin Clout, the new poet," as his editor calls him, had the stamp of originality upon him; and therefore our Shakspere would