Mr. Lemon to Mr. Collier, shows that in 1592, Mr. John Shakspere, with fourteen of his neighbours, were returned by certain Commissioners as "such recusants as have been heretofore presented for not coming monthly to the church according to her Majesty's laws, and yet are thought to forbear the church for debt and for fear of process, or for some other worse faults, or for age, sickness, or impotency of body." John Shakspere is classed amongst nine who "came not to church for fear of process for debt." We shall have to notice this assigned reason for the recusancy in a future Chapter. But the religious part of the question is capable of another solution, than that the father of Shakspere had become reconciled to the Romish religion. At that period the puritan section of the English church were acquiring great strength in Stratford and the neighbourhood; and in 1596, Richard Bifield, one of the most zealous of the puritan ministers, became its Vicar. John Shakspere and his neighbours might not have been Popish recusants, and yet have avoided the church. It must be borne in mind that the parents of William Shakspere passed through the great changes of religious opinion, as the greater portion of the people passed, without any violent corresponding change in their habits derived from their forefathers. In the time of Henry VIII. the great contest of opinion was confined to the supremacy of the Pope; the great practical state measure was the suppression of the religious houses. Under Edward VI. there was a very careful compromise of all those opinions and practices in which the laity were participant. In the short reign of Mary the persecution of the Reformers must have been offensive even to those who clung fastest to the ancient institutions and modes of belief; and even when the Reformation was fully established under Elizabeth, the habits of the people were still very slightly interfered with. The astounding majority of the conforming clergy is a convincing proof how little the opinions of the laity must have been disturbed. They would naturally go along with their old teachers. We have to imagine, then, that the father of William Shakspere, and his mother, were, at the time of his birth, of the religion established by law. His father, by holding a high municipal office after the accession of Elizabeth, had solemnly declared his adherence to the great principle of Protestantism-the acknowledgment of the civil sovereign as head of the church. The speculative opinions in which the child was brought up would naturally shape themselves to the creed which his father must have professed in his capacity of magistrate; but, according to some opinions, this profession was a disguise on the part of his father. The young Shakspere was brought up in the Roman persuasion, according to these notions, because he intimates an acquaintance with the practices of the Roman church, and mentions purgatory, shrift, confession, in his dramas.† Surely the poet might exhibit this familiarity with the ancient language of all Christendom, without thus speaking "from the overflow of Roman Catholic zeal." Was it "Roman Catholic zeal" which induced him to write those strong lines in King John against the "Italian Priest," and against those who

+ See Chalmers's' Apology,' p. 200.

* Hunter: 'New Illustrations,' vol. i. p. 106.
Chalmers. See also Drake, who adopts, in great measure, Chalmers's argument.

"Purchase corrupted pardon of a man"?

Was it "Roman Catholic zeal" which made him introduce these words into the famous prophecy of the glory and happiness of the reign of Elizabeth—

"God shall be truly known"?

He was brought up, without doubt, in the opinions which his father publicly professed, in holding office subject to his most solemn affirmation of those opinions. The distinctions between the Protestant and the Popish recusant were then not so numerous or speculative as they afterwards became. But, such as they were, we may be sure that William Shakspere learnt his catechism from his mother in all sincerity; that he frequented the church in which he and his brothers and sisters were baptized; that he was prepared for the discipline of the school in which religious instruction by a minister of the church was regularly afforded as the end of the other knowledge there taught. He became tolerant, according to the manifestation of his after-writings, through nature and the habits and friendships of his early life. But that tolerance does not presume insincerity in himself or his family. The Confession of Faith' found in the roof of his father's house two hundred years after he was born would argue the extreme of religious zeal, even to the defiance of all law and authority, on the part of a man who had by the acceptance of office professed his adherence to the established national faith. If that paper were to be believed, we must be driven to the conclusion that John Shakspére was an unconscientious hypocrite for one part of his life, and a furious bigot for the other part. It is much easier to believe that the Reformation fell lightly upon John Shakspere, as it did upon the bulk of the laity; and he and his wife, without any offence to their consciences, saw the Common Prayer take the place of the Mass-book, and acknowledged the temporal sovereign to be head of the church; that in the education of their children they dispensed with auricular confession and penance; but that they, in common with their neighbours, tolerated, and perhaps delighted in, many of the festivals and imaginative forms of the old religion, and even looked up for heavenly aid through intercession, without fancying that they were yielding to an idolatrous superstition, such as Puritanism came subsequently to denounce. The transition from the old worship to the new was not an ungentle one for the laity. The early reformers were too wise to attempt to root up habits-those deep-sunk foundations of the past which break the ploughshares of legislation when it strives to work an inch below the earth's surface.

Pass we on to matters more congenial to the universality of William Shakspere's mind than the controversies of doctrine, or the mutual persecutions of rival sects. He escaped their pernicious influences. He speaks always with reverence of the teachers of the highest wisdom, by whatever name denominated. He has learnt, then, at his mother's knee the cardinal doctrines of Christianity; he can read. His was an age of few books. Yet, believing, as we do, that his father and mother were well-educated persons, there would be volumes in their house capable of exciting the interest of an inquiring boyvolumes now rarely seen and very precious. Some of the first books of the

"

English press might be there; but the changes of language in the ninety years that had passed since the introduction of printing into England would almost seal them against a boy's perusal. Caxton's books were essentially of a popular character; but, as he himself complained, the language of his time was greatly unsettled, showing that "we Englishmen ben born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast."* Caxton's Catalogue was rich in romantic and poetical lore-the Confessio Amantis,' the Canterbury Tales,' Troilus and Creseide,' the Book of Troy,' the Dictes of the Philosophers,' the 'Mirror of the World,' the Siege of Jerusalem,' the Book of Chivalry,' the Life of King Arthur.' Here were legends of faith and love, of knightly deeds and painful perils-glimpses of history through the wildest romance—enough to fill the mind of a boy-poet with visions of unutterable loveliness and splendour. The famous successors of the first printer followed in the same careerthey adapted their works to the great body of purchasers; they left the learned to their manuscripts. What a present must "Dame Julyana Bernes" have bestowed upon her countrymen in her book of Hunting, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, with other books of sports! Master Skelton, laureate, would rejoice the hearts of the most orthodox, by his sly hits at the luxury and domination of the priesthood: Robert Copland, who translated "Kynge Appolyne of Thyre,' sent perhaps the story of that prince's "malfortunes and perilous adventures into a soil in which they were to grow into a 'Pericles' and Stephen Hawes, in his 'Pass Tyme of Pleasure,' he being "one of the grooms of the most honourable chamber of our sovereign lord King Henry the Seventh," would deserve the especial Arden. Subsequently came the English great books hereafter to be mentioned. not to be read by the child undisciplined by school, there were pictures in some of those old books which of themselves would open a world to him. That wondrous book of Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus Rerum,' describing, and exhibiting in appropriate wood-cuts, every animate and inanimate thing, and even the most complex operations of social life, whether of cooking, ablution, or the ancient and appropriate use of the comb for the destruction of beasts of prey-the child Shakspere would have turned over its leaves with delight. The Chronicle of England, with the Fruit of Times,'-the edition of 1527, with cuts innumerable,-how must it have taken that boy into the days of "fierce wars," and have shown him the mailed knights, the archers, and the billmen that fought at Poitiers for a vain empery, and afterwards turned their swords and their arrows against each other at Barnet and Tewkesbury ?-What dim thoughts of earthly mutations, unknown to the quiet town of Stratford, must the young Shakspere have received, as he looked upon the pictures of "the boke of John Bochas, describing the fall of princes, princesses, and other nobles," and especially as he beheld the portrait of John Lydgate, the translator, kneeling in a long black cloak, admiring the vicissitude of the wheel of fortune, the divinity being represented by a male figure, in a robe, with expanded wings! Rude and incongruous works of art, ye were yet an intelligible

favour of the descendant of Robert Froissart' of Lord Berners, and other But if these, and such as these, were

*Boke of Eneydos.

language to the young and the uninstructed; and the things ye taught through the visual sense were not readily to be forgotten!

But there were books in those days, simple and touching in their diction, and sounding alike the depths of the hearts of childhood and of age, which were the printed embodiments of that traditionary lore that the shepherd repeated in his loneliness when pasturing his flocks in the uplands, and the maiden recited to her companions at the wheel. Were there not in every house Christmas Carols,'-perhaps not the edition of Wynkyn de Worde in 1521, but reprints out of number? Did not the same great printer scatter about merry England—and especially dear were such legends to the people of the midland and northern counties-"A lytell Geste of Robyn Hode?" Whose ear amongst the yeomen of Warwickshire did not listen when some genial spirit would recite out that of "lytell Geste?"

"Lythe and lysten, gentylmen,

That be of fre bore blode,

I shall you tell of a good yeman,
His name was Robyn Hode;
Robyn was a proud outlawe

Whyles he walked on ground,

So curteyse an outlawe as he was one
Was never none y founde."

The good old printer, Wynkyn, knew that there were real, because spiritual, truths in these ancient songs and gestes; and his press poured them out in company with many "A full devoute and gosteley Treatise." That charming, and yet withal irreverend, "mery geste of the frere and the boy,"-what genial mirth was there in seeing the child, ill-used by his step-mother, making a whole village dance to his magic pipe, even to the reverendicity of the frere leaping in profane guise as the little boy commanded, so that when he ceased piping he could make the frere and the hard step-mother obedient to his innocent will! There was beautiful wisdom in these old tales-something that seemed to grow instinctively out of the bosom of nature, as the wild blossoms and the fruit of a rich intellectual soil, uncultivated, but not sterile. Of the romances of chivalry might be read, in the fair types of Richard Pynson, Sir Bevis of Southampton;' and in those of Robert Copland, Arthur of lytell Brytayne;' and Sir Degore, a Romance,' printed by William Copland; also 'Sir Isenbrace,' and 'The Knighte of the Swanne,' a "miraculous history," from the same press. Nor was the dramatic form of poetry altogether wanting in those days of William Shakspere's childhood-verse, not essentially dramatic in the choice of subject, but dialogue, which may sometimes pass for dramatic There was 'A new Interlude and a mery of the nature of the iiii elements;' and Magnyfycence; a goodly interlude and mery; and an interlude "wherein is shewd and described as well the bewte of good propertes of women as theyr vyces and euyll condicions;" and An interlude entitled Jack Juggeler and mistress Boundgrace;' and, most attractive of all, 'A newe playe for to be played in Maye games, very plesaunte and full of pastyme,' on the subject of Robin Hood and the Friar. The merry interludes of the inde

even now.

fatigable John Heywood were preserved in print, in the middle of the sixteenth century, whilst many a noble play that was produced fifty years afterwards has perished with its actors. To repeat passages out of these homely dialogues, in which, however homely they were, much solid knowledge was in some sort conveyed, would be a sport for childhood. Out of books, too, and single printed sheets, might the songs that gladdened the hearts of the English yeoman, and solaced the dreary winter hours of the esquire in his hall, be readily learnt. What countryman, at fair, or market, could resist the attractive titles of the "balletts" printed by the good widow Toy, of London-a munificent widow, who presented the Stationers' Company, in 1560, with a new table-cloth and a dozen of napkins-titles that have melody even to us who have lost the pleasant words they ushered in? There are,

and,

"Who lyve so mery and make suche sporte

As they that be of the poorer sorte?"

"God send me a wyfe that will do as I say;"

and, very charming in the rhythm of its one known line,

"The rose is from my garden gone."

Songs of sailors were there also in those days-England's proper songs-such as 'Hold the anchor fast.' There were collections of songs, too, as those of “Thomas Whithorne, gentleman, for three, four, or five voices," which found their way into every yeoman's house when we were a musical people, and could sing in parts. It was the wise policy of the early Reformers, when chantries had for the most part been suppressed, to direct the musical taste of the laity to the performance of the church service; * and many were the books adapted to this end, such as Bassus,' consisting of portions of the service to be chanted, and The whole Psalms, in four parts, which may be sung to all musical instruments' (1563). The metrical version of the Psalms, by Sternhold and Hopkins, first printed in 1562, was essentially for the people; and, accustomed as we have been to smile at the occasional want of refinement in this translation, its manly vigour, ay, and its bold harmony, may put to shame many of the feebler productions of later times. Sure we are that the child William Shakspere had his memory stored with its vigorous and idiomatic English.

But there was one book which it was the especial happiness of that contemplative boy to be familiar with. When in the year 1537 the Bible in English was first printed by authority, Richard Grafton, the printer, sent six copies to Cranmer, beseeching the archbishop to accept them as his simple gift, adding, "For your lordship, moving our most gracious prince to the allowance and licensing of such a work, hath wrought such an act worthy of praise as never

* One of the pleasantest characteristics of the present day is the revival of a love for and a knowledge of music amongst the people. Twenty years ago the birthplace of Shakspere presented a worthy example to England. The beautiful church in which our great poet is buried had been recently repaired and newly fitted up with rare propriety; and, most appropriately in this fine old collegiate church and chantry, the choir of young persons of both sexes, voluntarily formed from amongst the respectable inhabitants, was equal to the performance in the most careful style of the choral parts of the service, and of those anthems whose highest excellence is their solemn harmony rather than the display of individual voices.