He rod uppon a corsiare

Throughe a hondrith archery;
He never styntyde, nar never blane,
Till he came to the good lord Persè.

He set uppone the lord Persè

A dynte, that was full soare;

With a suar spear of a mightè tre

Clean thorow the body he the Persè bore."

The boy's heart is moved more than with a trumpet," and he is not content till he has heard the whole of that "old song of Percy and Douglas." It is easy to imagine, further, that the poor minstrel lingered about Stratford; that he had welcome at least in one house; and that from time to time the memory of the grammar-school boy was not unprofitably employed in treasuring up snatches of old romances side by side with his syntax. Could not that old man tell all the veritable legend of Sir Guy, how he wed the fair Phillis, and, "all clad in grey in pilgrim-sort," voyaged to the Holy Land, and there slew the giant Amarant and the treacherous Knight of Pavye, and how he utterly did redeem England from Danish tribute, by slaying the giant Colbrand, and moreover destroyed the dragon of Northumberland, and the cow of Dunsmore Heath, whose bones even then might be seen at Warwick? And had he not viewed the cave at Guy's Cliff made by the champion's own hands out of a craggy rock of stone, where he long dwelt in poverty, begging his daily bread at his own castle-gate? This legend, indeed, would tell of wondrous deeds done close at hand; and the boy-poet would ardently desire to see the famous castle of Warwick, and the hermit's cave, where the lady of Sir Guy, having received their wedding-ring by a trusty servant, came in haste, and finding her sick lord, "herself closed up his dying eyes." The minstrel would affirm the truth of this legend; and his young listener would believe it all. There was not only boy-faith in those days, but there was faith in tradition even amongst worldly men. The imagination could rest confidingly upon the distant and the past. Even in the middle of the next century an antiquary, unequalled for industrious and minute inquiry, could surrender his belief to the general truth of the history of Sir Guy: "Of his particular adventures, lest what I say should be suspected for fabulous, I will only instance that combat betwixt him and the Danish champion, Colebrand, whom some (to magnify our noble Guy the more) report to have been a giant. The story whereof, however it may be thought fictitious by some, forasmuch as there be those that make a question whether there was ever really such a man; or, if so, whether all be not a dream which is reported of him, in regard that the monks have sounded out his praises so hyperbolically: yet those that are more considerate will neither doubt the one nor the other, inasmuch as it hath been so usual with our ancient historians, for the encouragement of after-ages unto bold attempts, to set forth the exploits of worthy men with the highest encomiums imaginable: and therefore, should we for that cause be so conceited as to explode it, all history

• Ancient ballad of 'Chevy Chase'-the one which Sidney describes as "evil appareled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age."

of those times might as well be villified."* We are changed. Is the change for the better?

But the old minstrel has heroic songs that are not altogether of the marvellous. There was a story of Richard Coeur-de-Lion

"Against whose fury and unmatched force

The awless lion could not wage the fight;" t

which told in homely verse how

"The lyon was hongry and megre,

And bette his tayle to be egre."

There was the simple burst of patriotic exultation for the victory at Agincourt, beginning

"Owre kynge went forth to Normandy,
With grace and myght of chivalry;
The God for him wrought marvelously,
Wherefore Englonde may calle, and cry
Deo gratias:

Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria."

Many a long "fitte" had he, which told of doughty deeds of Arthur and his chivalry, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain, Sir Launfal, and Sir Isenbras; and, after he had preluded with his harp, the minstrel would begin each in stately wise with Listen, lordlings, and hold you still," or "Listen to me a little stond." Pass we over all the merry tales of Robin Hood which fell triplingly from his tongue, for many of these were fresh in the memory of the people, and were sung in the greenwood or by the Christmas fire. But he had songs which he could scarcely sing without a tear in his eye, for they were remembrances of days when the minstrel was welcomed by the porter at the abbey-gate, and the buttery-hatch was unclosed to give him a generous meal. They were songs of pilgrimages made by true lovers to shrines of Our Lady,-songs that two centuries after were to be adopted in a more correct school of poetry, but one scarcely more spirited and natural :

:

"Gentle herdsman, tell to me,

Of curtesy I thee pray,

Unto the town of Walsingham

Which is the right and ready way,"

has a fine racy melody about it, pleasanter we think, than the somewhat cloying

"Turn, gentle hermit of the dale."

The minstrel has departed; but he has left behind him such lore as will be long cherished by that wondrous boy of the Free Grammar-school. There are many traces in the works of Shakspere of his familiarity with old romances and old ballads; but, like all his other acquirements, there is no reproduction of the same thing under a new form. Rowe fancied that Shakspere's knowledge of the learned languages was but small, because "it is without controversy that in

his works we scarce find any traces of anything that looks like an imitation of the ancients." It is for inferior men to imitate. It was for Shakspere to subject his knowledge to his original power of thought, so that his knowledge and his invention should become one perfect and entire substance; and thus the minute critic, who desires to find the classical jewels set in the English gold, proclaims that they are not there, because they were unknown and unappreciated by the uneducated poet. So of the traditionary lore with which Shakspere must have been familiar from his very boyhood. That lore is not in his writings in any very palpable shape, but its spirit is there. The simplicity, the vigour, the pathos, the essential dramatic power, of the ballad poetry stood out in Shakspere's boyhood in remarkable contrast to the drawling pedantry of the moral plays of the early stage. The ballads kept the love and the knowledge of real poetry in the hearts of the people. There was something high, and generous, and tolerant, in those which were most popular; something which demonstratively told they belonged to a nation which admired courage, which loved truth, which respected misfortune. Percy, speaking of the more ancient ballad of Chevy Chase,' says " One may also observe a generous impartiality in the old original bard, when in the conclusion of his tale he represents both nations as quitting the field without any reproachful reflection on either; though he gives to his own countrymen the credit of being the smaller number." The author of that ballad was an Englishman; and we may believe this "impartiality" to have been an ingredient of the old English patriotism. At any rate it entered into the patriotism of Shakspere.

1

Ir is the twenty-third of April, and the birthday of William Shakspere is a general holiday at Stratford. It is St. George's day. There is high feasting at Westminster or at Windsor. The green rushes are strewn in the outward courts of the Palace; the choristers lift up the solemn chants of the Litany as a procession advances from the Queen's Hall to her Chapel; the Heralds move on gorgeously in their coat-armour; the Knights of the Garter and the Sovereign glitter in their velvet robes; the Yeomen of the Guard close round in their richest liveries.* At Stratford there is humbler pageantry. Upon the walls of the Chapel of the Holy Cross there was a wondrous painting of a terrible dragon pierced through the neck with a spear; but he has snapped the See Nichols's 'Progresses of Elizabeth,' vol. i., p. 88.

weapon in two with his fearful talons, and a gallant knight in complete armour is uplifting his sword, whilst the bold horse which he bestrides rushes upon the monster with his pointed champfrein: * in the background is a crowned lady with a lamb; and on distant towers a king and queen watching the combat. This story of Saint George and the delivery of the Princess of Silene from the power of the dragon was, on the twenty-third of April, wont to be dramatized at Stratford. From the altar of Saint George was annually taken down an ancient suit of harness, which was duly scoured and repaired; and from some storehouse was produced the figure of a dragon, which had also all needful annual reparation. Upon the back of some sturdy labourer was the harness fitted, and another powerful man had to bear the dragon, into whose body he no doubt entered. Then, all the dignitaries of the town being duly assembled, did Saint George and the Dragon march along, amidst the ringing of bells and the firing of chambers, and the shout of the patriotic population of "Saint George for England.” † Here is the simplest of dramatic exhibitions, presented through a series of years to the observing eyes of a boy in whom the dramatic power of going out of himself to portray some incident, or character, or passion, with incomparable truth, was to be developed and matured in the growth of his poetical faculty. As he looked upon that rude representation of a familiar legend he may first have conceived the capability of exhibiting to the eye a moving picture of events, and of informing it with life by appropriate dialogue. But in truth the essentially dramatic spirit of the ancient church had infused itself thoroughly into the popular mind; and thus, long after the Reformation had swept away most of the ecclesiastical ceremonials that were held to belong to the superstitions of Popery, the people retained this principle of personation in their common festivals; and many were the occasions in which the boy and the man, the maiden and the matron, were called upon to enact some part, in which bodily activity and mental readiness might be required; in which something of grace and even of dignity might be called forth; in which a free but good-tempered wit might command the applause of uncritical listeners; and a sweet or mellow voice, pouring forth our nation's songs, would receive the exhilarating homage of a jocund chorus. Let us follow the boy William Shakspere, now, we will suppose, some ten or eleven years old, through the annual course of the principal rustic holidays, in which the yeoman and the peasant, the tradesman and the artisan, with their wives and children, were equally ready to partake. We may discover in these familiar scenes not only those peculiar forms of a dramatic spirit in real manners which might in some degree have given a direction to his genius, but, what is perhaps of greater importance, that poetical aspect of common life which was to supply materials of thought and of imagery

* The armour for the horse's head, with a long projecting spike, so as to make the horse resemble an unicorn.

+ It appears from accounts which are given in fac-simile in Fisher's Work on the Chapel of the Guild that this procession repeatedly took place in the reign of Henry VIII.; and other ac counts show that it was continued as late as 1579.