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being at Aberdeen in October, 1601, assumed that Shakspere would naturally be of the number; having endeavoured previously to show that his tragedy of Macbeth, especially, exhibits traces of local knowledge which might have been readily collected by him in the exact path of such a journey. We have attempted very slightly to sketch the associations with which he might have been surrounded during this progress, putting these matters, of course, hypothetically, as materials for the reader to embody in his own imagination. We may conclude the subject by very briefly tracing his path homeward. Honest John Taylor, who seems to have been ready for every kindness that fortune could bestow upon him, left Edinburgh in better guise than he came thither: "Within the port, or gate, called the Netherbow, I discharged my pockets of all the money I had: and as I came penniless within the walls of that city at my first coming thither, so now, at my departing from thence, I came moneyless out of it again." But he soon found a worthy man ready to help him in his straits: "Master James Acmootye, coming for England, said, that if I would ride with him, that neither I nor my horse should want betwixt that place and London." If we take Taylor as our guide, we may see how Shakspere journeyed with his fellows upon the great high road between Edinburgh and London. On the first day they would ride to Dunbar; on the second day they would reach Berwick. They might lodge at an inn, but the exuberance of the ancient Scotch hospitality would probably afford them all welcome in the stronghold of some wealthy laird. Taylor thus describes the hospitality of his hosts at Cober-spath [Cockburn-spath], between Dunbar and Berwick: "Suppose ten, fifteen, or twenty men and horses come to lodge at their house, the men shall have flesh, tame and wild fowl, fish, with all variety of good cheer, good lodging, and welcome; and the horses shall want neither hay nor provender: and at the morning at their departure the reckoning is just nothing. This is this worthy gentleman's use, his chief delight being only to give strangers entertainment gratis." His description of the hospitality “in Scotland beyond Edinburgh" is more remarkable:-"I have been at houses like castles for building; the master of the house his beaver being his blue bonnet, one that will wear no other shirts but of the flax that grows on his own ground, and of his wife's, daughters', or servants' spinning; that hath his stockings, hose, and jerkin of the wool of his own sheeps' backs; that never (by his pride of apparel) caused mercer, draper, silk-man, embroiderer, or haberdasher to break and turn bankrupt: and yet this plain homespun fellow keeps and maintains thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every day relieving three or four score poor people at his gate; and, besides all this, can give noble entertainment, for four or five days together, to five or six Earls and Lords, besides Knights, Gentlemen, and their followers, if they be three or four hundred men and horse of them, where they shall not only feed but feast, and not feast but banquet; this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty to God and his King, whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety, charity, and hospitality: he never studies the consuming art of fashionless fashions, he never tries his strength to bear four or five hundred

acres on his back at once; his legs are always at liberty-not being fettered with golden garters, and manacled with artificial roses, whose weight (sometime) is the relics of some decayed lordship. Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland: amongst some of them I was entertained; from whence I did truly gather these aforesaid observations."

The Water Poet passes through Berwick without a word. The poet of Henry IV. would associate it with vivid recollections of his own Hotspur :

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He was now in the land of old heroic memories, which had reached the ear of his boyhood in his own peaceful Stratford, through the voice of the wandering harper; and which Froissart had recorded in a narrative as spirited as the fancies of "the old song of Percy and Douglas." The dark blue Cheviots lifted their summits around him, and beneath them were the plains which the Douglas wasted, who

"Boldely brente Northomberlonde, And haryed many a towyn."

He was in the land which had so often been the battle-field of Scotch and English in the chivalrous days, when war appeared to be carried on as much for sport as for policy, and a fight and a hunting were associated in the same song. The great battle of Otterbourn, in 1388, "was as valiantly foughten as could be devised," says Froissart; "for Englishmen on the one party, and Scots on the other party, are good men of war: for when they meet there is a hard fight without sparring; there is no love between them as long as spears, axes, or daggers will endure, but lay on each upon other; and when they be well beaten, and that the one part hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so in their deeds of arms and are so joyful, that such as be taken they shall be ransomed or they go out of the field, so that shortly each of them is so content with other, that at their departing courteously they will say, God thank you; but in fighting one with another there is no play nor sparring." play nor sparring." The spirit that moved the Percy and Douglas at Otterbourn animated the Percy and another Douglas at Holmedon in 1402.

"On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,
Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,

That ever valiant and approved Scot,

At Holmedon met,

Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour." †

The scene of this conflict was not many miles from Berwick. A knowledge of these localities was not necessary for Shakspere, to produce his magnificent creation of Hotspur. But in a journey through Northumberland the recollections of Hotspur would be all around him. At Alnwick, he would ride by the

* 'The Battle of Otterbourne.'

Henry IV., Part I., Act 1., Scene 1.

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gate which Hotspur built, and look upon the Castle in which the Percies dwelt. Two centuries had passed since Hotspur fell at Shrewsbury; but his memory lived in the ballads of his land, and the dramatic poet had bestowed upon it a more lasting glory. The play of Henry IV. was written before the union of England and Scotland under one crown, and when the two countries had constant feuds which might easily have broken out into actual war. But Shakspere, at the very time when the angry passions of England were excited by the Raid of Carlisle, thus made his favourite hero teach the English to think honourably of their gallant neighbours :

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Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds,

Even in the bosom of our adversaries." *

John Taylor contrived to be eighteen days on the road riding from Edinburgh to London: he was fifteen days in his progress from Berwick to Islington. Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows would make greater speed, and linger not so recklessly over the good cheer of the inns and mansions that opened their gates to them. "The way from Berwick to York and so to London" is laid down very precisely in Harrison's Description of England;' and the several stages present a total of 260 miles. The route thus given makes a circuit of several miles at Tadcaster; and yet it is 82 miles shorter than the present distance from Berwick to London. Taylor says, "The Scots do allow almost as large measure of their miles as they do of their drink." So it would appear they did also in England in the days of Shakspere. Sir Robert Carey crept out of the Palace of Richmond, where Elizabeth had just died, at three o'clock in the morning of Thursday the 24th of March, and he reached Edinburgh on the night of Saturday the 26th. He had of course relays of horses. Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows without this advantage would be ten or twelve days on the same road.

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"AT our feast we had a play called Twelve Night; or, What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmus in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from a lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." The student of the Middle Temple, whose little diary, after snugly lying amongst the Harleian Manuscripts, now in the British Museum, unnoticed for two centuries and a quarter, luckily turned up to give us one authentic memorial of a play of Shakspere's, is a facetious and gossiping young gentleman, who appears to have mixed with actors and authors, recording the scandal which met his ear with a diligent credulity. The 2nd of February, 1602, was the Feast of the

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