from the verses by Digges, prefixed to the first edition in the same grave with him." This information is of Shakspere, that it was erected previous to 1623-given by the tourist upon the authority of the clerk "Shakspere, at length thy pious fellows give The world thy works; thy works by which outlive The fate of this portrait of Shakspere, for we may well In who showed him the church, who "was above eighty years old." Here is unquestionable authority for the existence of this freestone seventy-seven years after the death of Shakspere. We have an earlier authority. In a plate to Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire,' first published in 1656, we have a representation of Shakspere's tomb, with the following:-"Neare the wall where this monument is erected, lyeth a plain freestone, underneath which his body is buried, with this epitaph: "Good frend," &c. But it is very remarkable, we think, that this plain freestone does not bear the name of Shakspere-has nothing to establish the fact that the stone originally belonged to his grave. We quite agree with Mr. De Quincey, that this doggrel attributed to Shakspere is "equally below his intellect no less than his scholarship ;" and we hold with him that, "as a sort of siste viator appeal to future sextons, it is worthy of the gravedigger or the parish-clerk, who was probably its author." The wife of Shakspere died on the 6th of August, 1623, and was buried on the 8th, according to the register. The gravestone is next to the stone with the doggrel inscription, but nearer to the north wall, upon which Shakspere's monument is placed. The stone has a brass plate with the following inscription:"HEERE LYETH INTERRED THE BODYE OF ANNE, WIFE OF MR. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, WHO DEP'TED THIS LIFE THE 6TH OF AVGVST, 1623, BEING OF THE AGE OF 67 YEARES," Some Latin verses then follow, which are intended to express the deep affection of her daughter, to whom Shakspere bequeathed a life-interest in his real property, and the bulk of his personal. The widow of Shakspere, in all likelihood, resided with this elder The following lines are inscribed beneath the bust:- daughter. It is possible that they formed one family "JVDICIO PYLIVM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM, OBIIT ANO. DOI. 1616. TaȚis 53, die 23 AP" Below the monument, but at a few paces from the wall, is a flat stone, with the following extraordinary inscription: "GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE, TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE; In a letter from Warwickshire, in 1693, the writer, after describing the monument to Shakspere, and giving its incription, says, "Near the wall where this monument is erected lies the plain freestone underneath which his body is buried, with this epitaph made by himself a little before his death." He then gives the epitaph, and subsequently adds, "Not one for fear of the curse above-said dare touch his gravestone, though his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid • Published from the original manuscript by Mr. Rodd, 1838. previous to his death. That daughter died on the 11th of July, 1649, having survived her husband, Dr. Hall, fourteen years. She is described as widow in the register of burials, Ranging with the other stones, but nearer the south wall, is a flat stone now bearing the following inscription: "HEERE LYETH YE BODY OF SVSANNA, WIFE ΤΟ JOHN HALL, GENT. YE DAVGHTER OF WILLIAM SHAK- On the same stone is an inscription for Richard Watts, TO WEEPE WITH HER THAT WEPT WITH ALL? 6 man appears to have made some collections for the biography of our English poets, and, under the name Shakspere, he gives the dates of his birth and death. But Davies, who added notes to his friend's manuscripts, affords us the following piece of information: "He was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits; particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipped, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great, that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three louses rampant for his arms." The accuracy of this chronicler, as to events supposed to have happened a hundred years before he wrote, may be inferred from his correctness in what was accessible to him. Justice Clodpate is a new character; and the three louses rampant have diminished strangely from the "dozen white luces" of Master Slender. In Mr. Davies's account we have no mention of the ballad-through which, according to Rowe, the young poet revenged his "ill-usage." But Capell, the editor of Shakspere, found a new testimony to that fact: "The writer of his Life,' the first modern (Rowe), speaks of a 'lost ballad,' which added fuel, he says, to the knight's before-conceived anger, and redoubled the prosecution;' and calls the ballad the first essay of Shakespere's poetry: one stanza of it, which has the appearance of genuine, was put into the editor's hands many years ago by an ingenious gentleman (grandson of its preserver), with this account of the way in which it descended to him' Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and died in the year 1703, aged upwards of ninety, remembered to have heard from several old people at Stratford the story of Shakespere's robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park; and their account of it agreed with Mr. Rowe's, with this addition,-that the ballad written against Sir Thomas by Shakespere was stuck upon his park-gate, which exasperated the knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against him. Mr. Jones had put down in writing the first stanza of the ballad, which was all he remembered of it, and Mr. Thomas Wilkes (my grandfather) transmitted it to my father by memory, who also took it in writing." This, then, is the entire evidence as to the deer-stealing tradition. According to Rowe, the young Shakspere was engaged more than once in robbing a park, for which he was prosecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy; he made a ballad upon his prosecutor, and then, being more severely pursued, fled to London. According to Davies, he was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits; for which he was often whipped, sometimes imprisoned, and at last forced to fly the country. According to Jones, the tradition of Rowe was correct as to robbing the park; and the obnoxous ballad being stuck upon the park-gate, a lawyer of Warwick was authorized to prosecute the offender. The tradition is thus full of contradictions upon the face of it. It necessarily would be so, for each of the witnesses speaks of circumstances that must have happened a hundred years before his time. The state of the law, as to the offence for which William Shakspere is said to have been prosecuted; the state of public opinion, as to the offence; and the position of Sir Thomas Lucy, as regarded his immediate neighbours-all these circumstances go very far to destroy the credibility of the tradition. Charlcote, then, shall not, at least by us, be surrounded by unpleasant associations in connexion with the name of Shakspere. It is, perhaps, the most interesting locality connected with that name; for in its great features it is essentially unchanged. There stands, with slight alteration, and those in good taste, the old mansion as it was reared in the days of Elizabeth. A broad avenue leads to its fine gateway, which opens into the court and the principal entrance. We would desire to people that hall with kindly inmates; to imagine the fine old knight, perhaps a little too puritanical, indeed, in his latter days, living there in peace and happiness with his family; merry as he ought to have been with his first wife, Jocosa (whose English name, Joyce, sounded not quite so pleasant), and whose epitaph, by her husband, is honourable alike to the deceased and to the survivor: "All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion, most sound; in love to her husband, most faithful and true; in friendship, most constant; to what in trust was committed to her, most secret; in wisdom, excelling; in governing her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her, most rare and singular. A great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none, unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled, of any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly: "Set down by him that best did know What hath been written to be true.-Thomas Lucy." We can picture Sir Thomas planting the second avenue, which leads obliquely across the park from the great gateway to the porch of the parish church. It is an avenue too narrow for carriages, if carriages then had been common; and the knight and his lady walk in stately guise along that grassy pathway, as the Sunday bells summon them to meet their humble neighbours in a place where all are equal. Charlcote is full of rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue may, perhaps, be of a later date than the age of Elizabeth; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first built. There may we still lie "Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out and doubt not that there was the place to which "A poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish." There may we still see "A careless herd, Full of the pasture," leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh fields and low branches whereon to browse. The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest objects. Whatever is new about it—and most of the cottages are new-looks like a restoration of what was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to preserve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote; but the more important have probably been swept away. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which we hold to be one of Shakspere's very early plays, he has denoted some of the characteristics of the Avon of his boyhood: "The current, that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays, Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford; But The Avon necessarily derives its chief interest from its associations with Shakspere. His contemporaries connected his fame with his native river : "Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were, To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, So wrote Jonson in his manly lines, "To the Memory "Beware, delighted poets, when you sing, The banks of Avon; for each flow'r, Hangs there the pensive head. Each tree, whose thick and spreading growth hath made Unwilling now to grow, Looks like the plume a captain wears, Which from his last rage flow. The piteous river wept itself away That, reach the map, and look If you a river there can spy, 66 235 Joseph Warton describes fair Fancy discovering the "Avon, thy rural views, thy pastures wild, Here first, at Fancy's fairy-circled shrine, Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall; Before me Pity seems to stand, A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er. Pale Terror leads the visionary band, And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood." ↑ The well-known lines of Gray are among his happiest efforts :— "Far from the sun and summer gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd. 'This pencil take,' she said, 'whose colours clear Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."" These quotations sufficiently show that the presiding genius of the Avon is Shakspere. But even without this paramount association, the river, although little visited, abounds with picturesque scenery and interesting objects. Shottery, the prettiest of hamlets, is scarcely a mile from Stratford. Here, in all probability, dwelt one who was to have an important influence upon the destiny of the boy-poet. We cannot say, absolutely, that Anne Hathaway, the future wife of William Shakspere, was of Shottery; but the prettiest of In Remembrance of Master William Shakspere. Ode. + Monody, written near Stratford-upon-Avon. The Progress of Poesy. out, Judith, the second daughter of Shakspere, lived till 1662. She was buried on the 9th of February of that year. On the 10th of February, 1616, she was married to Thomas Quiney, of Stratford. The last will of Shakspere would appear to have been prepared in some degree with reference to this marriage. It is dated the 25th of March, 1616; but the word "Januarii" seems to have been first written and afterwards struck "Martii" having been written above it. It is not unlikely, and indeed it appears most probable, that the document was prepared before the marriage of Judith; for the elder daughter is mentioned as Susanna Hallthe younger simply as Judith. To her, one thousand pounds is bequeathed, and fifty pounds conditionally. The life-interest of a further sum of one hundred and fifty pounds is also bequeathed to her, with remainder to her children; but if she died without issue within three years after the date of the will, the hundred and fifty pounds were to be otherwise appropriated. We may here fitly mention the mode in which Shakspere disposed of the great bulk of his property, subject, as we have elsewhere shown, to the dower of his wife upon the freehold estates. All the real estate is devised to his daughter, Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natural life. It is then entailed upon her first son and his heirs male; and in default of such issue, to her second son and his heirs male; and so on in default of such issue, to his granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, (called in the language of the time his "niece"); and in default of such issue, to his daughter Judith, and her heirs male. By this strict entailment it was manifestly the object of Shakspere to found a family. Like many other such purposes of shortsighted humanity, the object was not accomplished. His elder daughter had no issue but Elizabeth, and she died childless. The heirs male of Judith died before her. The estates were scattered after the second generation; and the descendants of his sister were the only transmitters to posterity of his blood and lineage. WITH REFERENCE TO THE ONE UNDOUBTED AND MOST INTERESTING PROPERTY THAT BELONGED TO WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, LET THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND BECOME ITS POSSESSORS AND ITS HEIRS FOR EVER." 66 |