After repeated contests the match is decided. But there is now to be a trial of greater skill, requiring the strong arm and the accurate eye-the old English practice which won the day at Agincourt. The archers go up into the hills: he who has drawn the first lot suddenly stops; there is a bush upon the rising ground before him, from which hangs some rag, or weasel-skin, or dead crow; away flies the arrow, and the fellows of the archer each shoot from the same spot. This was the roving of the more ancient archery, where the mark was sometimes on high, and sometimes on the ground, and always at variable distances. Over hill and dale go the young men onward in the excitement of their exercise, so lauded by Richard Mulcaster, first Master of Merchant Tailors' School :-" And whereas hunting on foot is much praised, what moving of the body hath the foot-hunter in hills and dales which the roving archer hath not in variety of grounds? Is his natural heat more stirred than the archer's is? Is his appetite better than the archer's?"* This natural premonition sends the party homeward to their noon-tide dinner at the Grange. But as they pass along the low meadows they send up many a "flight," with shout and laughter. An arrow is sometimes lost. But there is one who in after-years recollected his boyish practice under such mishaps : "In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way, with more advised watch I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof, Because what follows is pure innocence. *Positions:" 1581. I owe you much; and, like a wilful youth, Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, Or bring your latter hazard back again, And thankfully rest debtor for the first."* Gervase Markham, in his excellent "English Housewife," describes "a humble feast or an ordinary proportion which any good man may keep in his family for the entertainment of his true and worthy friend." We doubt if so luxurious a provision was made in our yeoman's house of the Grange; for Markham's "humble feast” consisted of three courses, the first of which comprised sixteen "dishes of meat that are of substance." Harrison, writing about forty years earlier, makes the yeoman contented with somewhat less abundance: "If they happen to stumble upon a piece of venison, and a cup of wine or very strong beer or ale (which latter they commonly provide against their appointed days), they think their cheer so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the Lord Mayor of London.”+ But, whatever was the plainness or the delicacy of their dishes, there is no doubt of the hearty welcome which awaited all those who had claims to hospitality: "If the friends of the wealthier sort come to their houses from far, they are commonly so welcome till they depart as upon the first day of their coming." Again: "Both the artificer and the husbandman are sufficiently liberal and very friendly at their tables; and when they meet they are so merry without malice, and plain without inward Italian or French craft or subtility, that it would do a man good to be in company among them." § Shakspere has himself painted, in one of his early plays, the friendly intercourse between the yeomen and their better educated neighbours. To the table where even Goodman Dull was welcome, the schoolmaster gives an invitation to the parson ; 'I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the aforesaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto."|| And it was at this table that the schoolmaster won for himself this great praise: "Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy." England was at that day not cursed with class and coterie society. The distinctions of rank were sufficiently well defined to enable men to mix freely, as long as they conducted themselves decorously. The barriers of modern society belong to an age of pretension. There are other sports to be played, and other triumphs to be achieved, before the day closes. In the meadow, at some little distance from the butts, is fixed a machine of singular construction. It is the Quintain. Horsemen are beginning to assemble around it, and are waiting the arrival of the guests from the Grange, who are merry in " an arbour" of mine host's "orchard." But the youths are for more stirring matters; and their horses are ready. To the inexperienced eye the machine which has been erected in the field "That which here stands up, Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block."** It is the wooden figure of a Saracen, sword in hand, grinning hideously upon the assailants who confront him. The horsemen form a lane on either side, whilst one, "The Merchant of Venice," Act I., Scene 1. "Description of England," 1586, p. 170. § Ibid. the boldest of challengers, couches his spear and rides violently at the enemy, who appears to stand firm upon his wooden post. The spear strikes the Saracen just on the left shoulder; but the wooden man receives not his wound with patience, for by the action of the blow he swings round upon his pivot, and hits the horseman a formidable thump with his extended sword before the horse has cleared the range of the misbeliever's weapon. Then one chorus of laughter greets the unfortunate rider as he comes dolefully back to the rear. Another and another fail. At last the quintain is struck right in the centre, and the victory is won. The Saracen conquered, a flat board is set up upon the pivot, with a sand-bag at one end, such as Stow has described :- "I have seen a quintain set up on Cornhill, by Leadenhall, where the attendants of the lords of merry disports have run and made great pastime ; for he that hit not the board end of the quintain was laughed to scorn; and he that hit it full, if he rode not the faster, had a sound blow upon his neck with a bag full of sand hanged on the other end."* The merry guests of the Grange enjoy the sport as heartily as Master Laneham, who saw the quintain at Kenilworth: "The speciality of the sport was to see how some of his slackness had a good bob with the bag; and some for his haste to topple downright, and come tumbling to the post: some striving so much at the first setting out, that it seemed a question between the man and the beast, whether the course should be made a horseback or a foot: and, put forth with the spurs, then would run his race by us among the thickest of the throng, that down came they together hand over head. * * * By my troth, Master Martin, 't was a goodly pastime." And now they go to supper, THE poet who has described a man of savage wildness, cherishing "unshaped, halfhuman thoughts" in his wanderings among vales and streams, green wood and hollow dell, has said that nature ne'er could find the way into his heart : "A primrose by a river's brim These are lines at which some of the worldly-wise and clever have been wont to laugh; but they contain a deep and universal truth. Without some association, the most beautiful objects in nature have no charm; with association, the commonest acquire a value. The very humblest power of observation is necessarily dependent upon some higher power of the mind. Those who observe differ from those who do not observe, in the possession of acquired knowledge, or original reflection, which is to guide the observation. The observer who sees accurately, who knows what others have observed, and who applies this knowledge only to the humble purpose of adding a new flower or insect to his collection, we call a naturalist. But there are naturalists, worthy of the name, who, without bringing any very high powers of mind to their observation of nature, still show, not only by the minuteness and accuracy of their eye, but by their genial love and admiration of the works of the Creator, that with them nature has found the way into the heart. Such was White of Selborne. We delight to hear him describe the mouse's nest which he found suspended in the head of a thistle; or how a gentleman had two milk-white rooks in one nest: we partake in his happiness when he writes of what was to him an event: "This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren whose crown glitters like burnished gold;" and we half suspect that the good old gentleman had the spirit of poetry in him when he says of the goat-sucker, "This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day; so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun." He wrote verses; but they are not so poetical as his prose. A naturalist endowed with higher powers of association has taught us how philosophy looks upon the common aspects of the outer world. Davy was a scientific observer. He shows us the reason of the familiar prognostications of the weather-the coppery sunset, the halo round the moon, the rainbow at night, the flight of the swallow. Even omens have a touch of science in them; and there is a philosophical difference in the luck of seeing one magpie or two. But there is an observer of nature who looks upon all animate and inanimate existence with a higher power of association even than these. It is the poetical naturalist. Of this rare class our Shakspere is decidedly the head. Let us endeavour to understand what his knowledge of external nature was, how it was applied, and how it was acquired. Some one is reported to have said that he could affirm from the evidence of his "Seasons" that Thomson was an early riser. Thomson, it is well known, duly slept till noon. Bearing in mind this practical rebuke of what is held to be internal evidence, we still shall not hesitate to affirm our strong conviction that the Shakspere of the country was an early riser. Thomson, professedly a descriptive poet, assuredly described many things that he never saw. He looked at nature very often with the eyes of others. To our mind his celebrated description of morning offers not the slightest proof that he ever saw the sun rise.* In this description we have the meek-eyed morn, the dappled east, brown night, young day, the dripping rock, the misty mountain: the hare limps from the field; the wild deer trip from the glade ; music awakes in woodland hymns; the shepherd drives his flock from the fold; the sluggard sleeps "But yonder comes the powerful king of day, He looks in boundless majesty abroad, And sheds the shining day, that burnish'd plays On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams, This is conventional poetry, the reflection of books;-excellent of its kind, but still not the production of a poet-naturalist. Compare it with Chaucer : "The besy larke, the messanger of day, *"Summer." Line 43 to 96. † "The Knight's Tale." Line 1493. |