The traditionary belief is sanctioned by long usage and universal acceptation The merely curious look in reverent silence upon that mean room, with its massive joists and plastered walls, firm with ribs of oak, where they are told the poet of the human race was born. Eyes now closed on the world but who have left that behind which the world "will not willingly let die, "have glistened under this humble roof, and there have been thoughts unutterable-solemn, confiding, grateful, humble-clustering round their hearts in that hour. The autographs of Byron and Scott are amongst hundreds of perishable inscriptions. Disturb not the belief that William Shakspere first saw the light in this venerated room.* "The victor Time has stood on Avon's side But Shakspere's home, his boyhood's home, is ours!" Prologue for the Shakspere Night, Dec. 7, 1847, by C. Knight. We shall postpone, until nearly the close of this volume, a description, not only of the most recent condition of the premises in Henley Street, but of the garden of New Place, which has also been acquired by public subscription. (See Book II. chapter 10.) LIFE. D 33 THE poet in his well-known Seven Ages' has necessarily presented to us only the great boundary-marks of a human life: the progress from one stage to another he has left to be imagined: "At first the infant Muling and puking in the nurse's arms." Perhaps the most influential, though the least observed, part of man's existence, that in which he learns most of good or of evil, lies in the progress between this first act and the second: : "And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Between the "nurse's arms" and the ་་ 'school" there is an important interval, filled up by a mother's education. Let us see what the home instruction of the young Shakspere would probably have been. There is a passage in one of Shakspere's Sonnets, the 89th, which has induced a belief that he had the misfortune of a physical defect, which would render him peculiarly the object of maternal solicitude : : "Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, And I will comment upon that offence: Again in the 37th Sonnet :- "As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, These lines have been interpreted to mean that William Shakspere was literally lame, and that his lameness was such as to limit him, when he became an actor, to the representation of the parts of old men. We should, on the contrary, have no doubt whatever that the verses we have quoted may be most fitly received in a metaphorical sense, were there not some subsequent lines in the 37th Sonnet which really appear to have a literal meaning; and thus to render the previous lame and lameness expressive of something more than the general selfabasement which they would otherwise appear to imply. In the following lines lame means something distinct from poor and despised :— "For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, of all, or more, I make my love engrafted to this store: So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give." Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure-that, if Shakspere were lame, his infirmity was not such as to disqualify him for active bodily exertion. The same series of verses that have suggested this belief that he was lame also show that he was a horseman.† His entire works exhibit that familiarity with external nature, with rural occupations, with athletic sports, which is incompatible with an inactive boyhood. It is not impossible that some natural defect, or some accidental injury, may have modified the energy of such a child; and have che • “Malone has most inefficiently attempted to explain away the palpable meaning of the above lines; and adds, 'If Shakspeare was in truth lame, he had it not in his power to halt occasionally for this or any other purpose. The defect must have been fixed and permanent.' Not so. Surely many an infirmity of the kind may be skilfully concealed; or only become visible in the moments of hurried movement. Either Sir Walter Scott or Lord Byron might, without any impropriety, have written the verses in question. They would have been applicable to either of them. Indeed the lameness of Lord Byron was exactly such as Shakspeare's might have been; and I remember, as a boy, that he selected those speeches for declamation which would not constrain him to the use of such exertions as might obtrude the defect of his person into notice."-Life of William Shakspeare, by the Rev. William Harness, M.A. † See Sonnets 50 and 51. D 2 rished in him that love of books, and traditionary lore, and silent contemplation, without which his intellect could not have been nourished into its wondrous strength. But we cannot imagine William Shakspere a petted child, chained to home, not breathing the free air upon his native hills, denied the boy's privilege to explore every nook of his own river. We would imagine him communing from the first with Nature, as Gray has painted him— "The dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms and smil'd." The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free Grammar School of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of seven years of age, and able to read. The Grammar School, as we shall presently have to show in detail, was essentially connected with the Corporation of Stratford; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspere became qualified by age for admission to a school where the best education of the time was given, literally for nothing, his father, in that year, being chief alderman, should not have sent him to the school. We assume, without any hesitation, that William Shakspere did receive in every just sense of the word the education of a scholar; and as such education was to be had at his own door, we also assume that he was brought up at the Free Grammar School of his own town. His earlier instruction would therefore be a preparation for this school, and the probability is that such instruction was given him at home. The letters have been taught, syllables have grown into words, and words into short sentences. There is something to be committed to memory : "That is question now; And then comes answer like an Absey-book." : In the first year of Edward VI. was published by authority 'The A B C, with the Pater-noster, Ave, Crede, and Ten Commandementtes in Englysshe, newly translated and set forth at the kynges most gracious commandement.' But the ABC soon became more immediately connected with systematic instruction in religious belief. The alphabet and a few short lessons were followed by the catechism, so that the book containing the catechism came to be called an ABC book, or Absey-book. Towards the end of Edward's reign was put forth by authority A Short Catechisme or playne instruction, conteynynge the sume of christian learninge,' which all schoolmasters were called upon to teach after the "little catechism" previously set forth. Such books were undoubtedly suppressed in the reign of Mary, but upon the accession of Elizabeth they were again circulated. A question then arises, Did William Shakspere receive his elementary instruction in Christianity from the books sanctioned by the Reformed Church? It has been maintained that his father belonged to the Roman Catholic persuasion. This belief rests upon the following foundation. In the year 1770, Thomas Hart, who then inhabited one of the tenements in Henley Street which had been bequeathed to his family by William Shakspere's granddaughter, employed a bricklayer to new tile the house; and this bricklayer, by King John, Act 1., Scene 1. |