SHAKESPEARE AND ANNE HATHAWAY AND SHOTTERY. 123 HAKESPEARE'S biography is handed down to us through the rural scenes around Stratford. The impress on our great author's writings is that of one born to the country and living in it; his works afford evidence in a remarkable degree of his intimate acquaintance with country life, and force a conviction that, in his early days, he dwelt mostly in the neighbourhood of Stratford-upon-Avon, in and among the scenes which were so deeply impressed upon his memory as to afford a constant and copious source of poetical imagery. His family connections were, at least in part, agricultural; and whether, during his education in the Grammar School at Stratford, he lived partly in the town and partly with his relatives in the neighbourhood, his works show that he ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE (BACK VIEW). must have passed much of his time, as a boy, in the country itself. There are such abundant expressions, allusions, and similes so essentially rural, that they could hardly have been used by any writer not of country growth, and can be fully understood only by those who have been brought up in the country itself. The frequent introduction of passages peculiarly rural, shows such a deep insight into country customs and pursuits, such an intimate knowledge of horticultural processes and the business of the farm, as familiar from childhoodand he will be unable to answer, nay, most likely, unable to tell its name. Here is the radical error even in our so - styled "University education." Its votaries are conversant with books, not with Nature; they view Nature through the spectacles of books. With the works which form the most lasting monuments of the talents of man they are familiar; of those nobler works which bear the visible impress of the Deity they are often proThey foundly ignorant. forget that Solomon "spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." could only have been acquired in gardens and farm-houses. Truly he loved the country at all times and at all seasons; there was nothing beautiful in Nature that escaped his eye. The progress of flowers, their periods of appearing, their varying forms and qualities, the myriad insect tribes that hover around and within them; the habits of birds, their departure and return; the different customs of animals, the variety of trees, to him revealed new wonders, adding to his knowledge, daily gaining triumphs over Nature, constant progression in wisdom, with increasing admiration and understanding of the productions of the Omnipotent. Ask the student or the learned the most ordinary question regarding vegetable physiology; the probability is that such a subject will be found to have been regarded as beneath a modern student's notion of science, or, at least, that its consideration has never engaged serious attention. Inquire how the knowledge of mathematics gives new views of the sublime science of astronomy, and you will receive the information you demand. Request an exposition of some particular theory in metaphysics, and your desire may still be gratified. Ask him concerning an event in the ancient history of the world, or the connexion of classic fable and historic truth, and your questions are answered. But ask this same literate to describe the function or uses of some cominon plant or insect-one which he sees every day, with which he has been Take courage, ye timid observers, continue to steal hours from the bustle of the world and devote them to the study of natural history; thus shall ye harvest a tranquillizing, contented, and invigorating spirit, when mind and body are fatigued with the exertions of business. Try and follow, however humbly, in the foot-treads of Lubbock, the banker naturalist, who, in his minute insect observings, affords the highest and noblest example of devoted study in its most difficult form. Know you that England's mighty bard also deemed anything and everything, however minute, which God had been pleased to create, worthy of man's closest study. He abundantly felt that "the beauties of the wilderness are His," and the lofty monarch of the forest, HIS FAMILIARITY WITH ALL NATURE. the lowly and fragile flower, the Leviathan with his plated mail, and each tiny wing that flutters in the sunbeam, are only so many varied manifestations of the same Almighty power. Bear in mind that when he lavished on the world his images, no Doddridge Blackmore had lived to delight with the delicious descriptions of England's scenery, abounding in "Lorna Doone," "Alice Lorraine," and other of his writings; neither had a Hugh Miller or Richard Jefferies laid open their caskets of jewels, so eloquent of rural life. The great master spirit had opened the pathways for these and other writers, to trace more fully on the lines mapped out for them, the truest observings of the daily round of animate nature. Now, after a lapse of three centuries, it needs a Harting to depict his familiarity with bird and animal life, and to show us that his intimacy with these, as with all else, was intuitive. "April greens the ground" all through the Shakespeare country. The primrose, darling of the spring, its fair pale yellow petals wearing that peculiar look of dewy freshness, is one of the earliest begotten of its children. Common as most of God's blessings, its chaste beauty and delicious faint odour seem scattered everywhere where clayey soil exists, and yet it too has its choice nooks and corners where it revels more willingly than elsewhere. "In the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie." 125 Pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength." -Winter's Tale. On Avon's banks in every moist direction, the golden marigold would put forth its profusion of richly coloured blossoms, and everywhere around the delicate white flowers of the cardamine, known as lady's-smock, or, as Shakespeare has it, " lady-smocks all silver white," but, better perhaps than either, known to young and old as the "cuckoo flower" (the only one of the many which were once so-called that retains its old appellation), are to be seen in all their profusion and simplicity, evidencing a joyful welcome of their namesake. Here in the first weeks of a genial spring they found many a sweet blossom filling up the beneficent order of Nature, and opening to the sunshine at its appointed time. They despised not the dandelion even with its indifferent naughty character, while the red campion, the vetch, stitchwort, and others had each their charm. Then there was the brown lea beyond, enamelled with daisies powdered over, which Chaucer had before told of, whither he went at early morn to watch "the day's eye" open, and again at eve" to see this flower, how it will go to rest. For fear of night, so hateth it the darkness." There now exist hedgerows at Shottery where, along with primroses, ox-lips and arums thrive in rare luxuriance, and many open banks where the purple sweet-violet flourishes in such profusion as to enamel the green sward with its delicate colour. In one of his earliest comedies Shakespeare gives the name Viola to one of his first female creations. There are some fifteen allusions to it in his plays. In "Measure for Measure" it furnishes him with a striking illustration of angels' malignant influence. pied" as belonging to the happy springtime of love. In the "Winter's Tale" they supply a delicious passage-though "dim they are "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath." In "King John " we are warned that "to throw a perfume on the violet" which is the essence of all sweetness" is wasteful, and ridiculous excess." A beautiful reference occurs in "King Richard II." :— Shottery "The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? In "Midsummer Night's Dream" the violet blooms among the flora of Fairyland :"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows; Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania, some time of the night. Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight." "It came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing, and giving odour." -Twelfth Night. In the sweet spring in "Love's Labour Lost," "violets blue" are named with "daisies "Who are the violets now That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?" Cymbeline's princely boys are said to be gentle as zephyrs "blowing below the violet, not wagging his sweet head." Laertes compares young Hamlet's affection for Ophelia to "a violet in the youth of primy nature." Ophelia plaintively says "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." And in the dirge over his dead sister Laertes breaks into the poetic effusion "From her fair and unpolluted flesh Here he clearly refers to the rarer white variety, readily found in the hedges around Stratford, whose hiding-place is generally be QUOTATIONS EVIDENCING HIS KNOWLEDGE OF PLANTS. trayed by wafts of fragrance, and ofttimes deep in the grass hid by the bloom of the ivy-leaved veronica, while the bank beyond may have shone with the blue glints of the germander speedwell. In the "Winter's Tale" the violet has the finest compliment paid to it. In "Cymbeline," old Belarius compares the king's sons to zephyrs "blowing below the violet, not wagging his sweet head." The great master is so fond of the name that he christens one of his most beautiful heroines Viola, and he shows his love for flowers and the woods by calling many of his characters by their compounds. There is Rosalind, the archest, quickest of all his maids; there is Silvia, "whom all our swains commend." There is also a Silvius: a prince Florizel, too; and a Lord Escalus. Nay, he does not disdain to call his clowns after the same fashion, and we have Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernel as friends of Christopher Sly; and good fellows they were, we warrant. Then, who but Shakespeare would have drawn names for fairies from the same source from whence he gets his clowns? And so we have Fairy Peas Blossom and Fairy Mustard Seed: worthier names they have not in their own realms. In times when English wines were more used, every housewife in Warwickshire could produce her cowslip-wine. The cowslip is still sold in many markets for this purpose, and little cottage girls still ramble the meadows during April and May in search of it to carry home to their mothers for this wine-making. Sweet Anne, we may feel certain, was an adept in the art, and would often bring forth a glass for Will's grateful refreshment and acknowledgment of her housewife skill, The present occupant of 127 Mary Arden's birthplace and home at Wilmcote, Mistress Neighbour, "one of the good old sort," maintains in highest excellence the Arden family cunning in the concoction and make of cowslip and other domestic wines. The poet's honoured mother held no higher skill in the craft than does her existing successor to the old homestead, Mistress Neighbour. On occasions of pilgrimages to this dear old farm-house, second in interest to none of England's time-worn relics-not even that of Anne of Shottery-as maid and wife, we have tasted gooseberry wine of her own make, far superior to most of the so-called champagne put on pretentious tables on festive occasions. The Neighbour family cultivate about one hundred acres of land, which for merly belonged to the Arden estate; the present picturesque range of buildings, then as now, formed the homestead. The whole place and its surroundings have undergone little change beyond the decrepitude which even English heart of oak is incapable of resisting. So entirely true is this of the wonderfully quaint old place that its age is difficult of realization in these days of "jerry building." Few "doers" of the Shakespeare country-not even our American cousins-look in to see dear Mistress Neigh |