butcher's shop and the tenement adjoining; for the other house was known as the Maidenhead Inn, in 1642. In another part of Shakspere's will he bequeaths amongst the bulk of his property, to his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, with remainder to her male issue,"two messuages or tenements, with the appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley-street, within the borough of Stratford." There are existing settlements of this very property in the family of Shakspere's eldest daughter and granddaughter; and this grand-daughter, Elizabeth Nash, who was married a second time to Sir John Barnard, left both houses, namely, "the inn, called the Maidenhead, and the adjoining house and barn," to her kinsmen Thomas and George Hart, the grandsons of her grandfather's "sister Joan." These persons left descendants, with whom this property remained until the beginning of the present century. But it was gradually diminished. The orchards and gardens were originally extensive: a century ago tenements had been built upon them, and they were alienated by the Hart then in possession. The Maidenhead Inn became the Swan Inn, and afterwards the Swan and Maidenhead. The White Lion, on the other side of the property, was extended, so as to include the remaining orchards and gardens. The house in which Mrs. Hart had lived so long became divided into two tenements; and at the end of the last century the lower part of one was a butcher's shop. Mr. Wheler, in a very interesting account of these premises, and their mutations, published in 1824, tells us that the butcher-occupant, some thirty years ago, having an eye to every gainful attraction, wrote up, "WILLIAM SHAKSPERE WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE. N.B.-A HORSE AND TAXED CART TO LET." It is not now used as a butcher's shop, but there are the arrangements for a butcher's trade in the lower room-the cross-beams with hooks, and the window-board for joints. Until recently we were told by a sign-board, "THE IMMORTAL SHAKSPERE WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE." Twenty-five years ago, when we made our first pilgrimage to Stratford, the house had gone out of the family of the Harts, and the last alleged descendant was recently ejected. It had been a gainful trade to her for some years to show the old kitchen behind the shop, and the honoured bed-room. When the poor old woman, the last of the Harts, had to quit her vocation (she claimed to have inherited some of the genius, if she had lost the possessions, of her great ancestor, for she had produced a marvellous poem on the Battle of Waterloo), she set up a rival show-shop on the other side of the street, filled with all sorts of trumpery relics, pretended to have belonged to Shakspere. But she was in ill odour. In a fit of resentment, the day before she quitted the ancient house, she whitewashed the walls of the bed-room, so as to obliterate the pencil inscriptions with which they were covered. It was the work of her successor to remove the plaster; and manifold names, obscure or renowned, again see the light. A few ancient articles of furniture were about the house; but there was nothing which could be considered as originally belonging to it as the home of William Shakspere. From a drawing made by Colonel Delamotte in 1788, the houses, it is seen, then presented one uniform front, and there were dormer windows connected with rooms in the roof. We have a plan before us, accompanying Mr. Wheler's account of these premises, which shows that they occupied a frontage of thirty-one feet. From a drawing made by Mr. Pyne, after a sketch by Mr. Edridge, in 1807, we see that the dormer windows were by that time removed, as also the gable at the east end of the front. The house, moreover, had been shorn of much of its external importance. From a lithograph engraving in Mr. Wheler's account, published in 1824, the pre mises, we see, had then been pretty equally divided. The Swan and Maidenhead half has had its windows modernized, and the continuation of the timber-frame has been obliterated by a brick casing. In 1807, we observe that the western half had been divided into two tenements;-the fourth of the whole premises, that is the butcher's shop, the kitchen behind, and the two rooms over, being the portion commonly shown as Shakspere's House. Some years ago, upon a frontage, in continuation of the tenement at the west, three small cottages were built. A fourth appears, from the continuation of the framed timber front, and from the old doorways, which communicate internally, plainly to have formed part of the birth-place, but which, in 1771, was separated from it. The whole of this property belongs now to the nation, it having been purchased, partly by private contract, and partly by public auction, at a cost of some four thousand pounds. How far the one messuage extended, in which John Shakspere lived, which William Shakspere, his heir, gave to his sister for life, and which did not pass out of the hands of Shakspere's decendants till 1807, cannot perhaps be exactly determined. It is evident, from the plan, that in some parts doors have been stopped up, and in others doors have been cut through; and we are inclined to think that the second messuage, which became the public-house in 1642, occupied less of the frontage than it now claims. Was William Shakspere, then, born in the house in Henley-street, which has been purchased by the nation? Mr. Wheler says, "In this lowly abode it has been the invariable and uncontradicted tradition of the town, that our inimitable Bard drew his first breath." Disturb not the belief. To look upon this ancient house,-perhaps one of the oldest in Stratford, votaries have gathered from every region where the name of Shakspere is known. Washington Irving says, "I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit was to the house where Shakspere was born; and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his father's craft of woolcombing. It is a small, mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster,—a true nestling-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every language, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, from the prince to the peasant; and present a simple but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to the great poet of nature. The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, with a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap. She was particularly assiduous in exhibiting the relics with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds." Washington Irving had a truc poet's faith even in the relics: What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them, and enjoy all the charm of the reality?" The American pilgrim found a representative of the matter-of-fact portion of the world in the old sexton of Stratford, and a superannuated crony named John Ange:"I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights speak very dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the Shakspere House. John Ange shook his head when I mentioned her valuable and inexhaustible collection of relics, particularly her remains of the mulberry-tree; and the old sexton even expressed a doubt as to Shakspere having been born in her house. I soon discovered that he looked upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to the poet's tomb; the latter having comparatively but few visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset; and mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different channels, even at the fountain-head." For ourselves, we frankly confess that the want of absolute certainty that Shakspere was born in the house in Henley-street produces a state of mind that is something higher and pleasanter than the conviction that depends upon positive evidence. We are content to follow the popular faith, undoubtingly. The traditionary belief is sanctified by long usage and universal acceptation. The merely curious look in reverent silence upon that mean room, with its massive joists and plastered walls, firm with ribs of oak, where they are told the poet of the human race was born. Eyes now closed on the world, but who have left that behind which the world "will not willingly let die," have glistened under this humble roof, and there have been thoughts-unutterable, solemn, confiding, grateful, humble-clustering round their hearts in that hour. The autographs of Byron and Scott are amongst hundreds of perishable inscriptions. Disturb not the belief that William Shakspere first saw the light in this venerated room. Pursuing the associations connected with Shakspere, we naturally turn from the home of his childhood to his school, and his school-boy days. In the seventh year of the reign of Edward VI., a royal Charter was granted to Stratford for the incorporation of the inhabitants. That charter recites, "That the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon was an ancient borough, in which a certain Guild was theretofore founded, and endowed with divers lands, tenements, and possessions, out of the rents, revenues, and profits whereof a certain Free Grammar-school for the education of boys there was made and supported." The charter further recites the other public objects to which the property of the Guild had been applied; that it was dissolved; and that its possessions had come into the hands of the king. The charter of incorporation then grants to the bailiff and burgesses certain properties which were parcel of the possessions of the Guild, for the general charges of the borough, for the maintenance of an ancient almshouse, "and that the Free Grammar-school, for the instruction and education of boys and youth, should be thereafter kept up and maintained as theretofore it used to be." The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free Grammar-school of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of seven years of age, and able to read. The Grammar-school was essentially connected with the corporation of Stratford; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspere became qualified by age for admission to a school, where the best education of the time was given literally for nothing, his father, in that year being chief alderman, should not have sent him to the school. We assume, without any hesitation, that William Shakspere did receive, in every just sense of the word, the education of a scholar; and as such education was to be had at his own door, we also assume that he was brought up at the Free Grammar-school of his own town. The Grammar-school is now an ancient room, over the old Town-hall of Stratfordboth, no doubt, offices of the ancient Guild. We enter from the street into a court, of which one side is formed by the chapel of the Holy Cross. Opposite the chapel is a staircase; ascending which we are in a plain, antique-looking room, which has within the last few years been neatly repaired and restored to something like what may be supposed to have been its original appearance. A rude, antique desk used to stand in this room, which was called Shakspere's desk; how long it had been called so, is uncertain. But it appears that the Chapel of the Guild was also used as a schoolroom. This chapel is in great part a very perfect specimen of the plainer ecclesiastical architecture of the reign of Henry VII.-a building of just proportions and some ornament, but not running into elaborate decoration. The interior now presents nothing very remarkable. But upon a general repair of the chapel in 1804, beneath the whitewash of successive generations was discovered a series of most remarkable paintings-some in a portion of the building erected by Sir Hugh Clopton, and others in the far more ancient chancel. If this was the school-room of William Shakspere, those rude paintings must have produced a powerful effect on his imagination. Many of those in the ancient chancel constituted a pictorial romance— e-the History of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree, at the creation of the world, to its rescue from the pagan Cosdroy, king of Persia, by the Christian king, Heraclius; and its final exaltation at Jerusalem,—the anniversary of which event was celebrated at Stratford at its annual fair, held on the 14th of September. There is a passage in one of Shakspere's sonnets, the 89th, which has induced a belief that he had the misfortune of a physical defect, which would render him peculiarly the object of maternal solicitude :— 'Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, And I will comment upon that offence; These and other lines have been interpreted to mean that William Shakspere was literally lame, and that his lameness was such as to limit him, when he became an actor, to the representation of the parts of old men. Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure that, if Shakspere were lame, his infirmity was not such as to disqualify him for active bodily exertion. The same series of verses that have suggested this belief that he was lame, also show that he was a horseman. His entire works exhibit that familiarity with external nature, with rural occupations, with athletic sports, which is incompatible with an inactive boyhood. It is not impossible that some natural defect, or some accidental injury, may have modified the energy of such a child; and have cherished in him that love of books, and traditionary lore, and silent contemplation, without which his intellect could not have been nourished into its wondrous strength. But we cannot imagine William Shakspere a petted child, chained to home, not breathing the free air upon his native hills, denied the boy's privilege to explore every nook of his own river. We would imagine him communing from the first with Nature, as Gray has painted him, nature. "The dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled." Much of the education of William Shakspere was unquestionably in the fields. A thousand incidental allusions manifest his familiarity with all the external aspects of He is very rarely a descriptive poet, distinctively so called; but images of mead and grove, of dale and upland, of forest depths, of quiet walks by gentle rivers,reflections of his own native scenery,-spread themselves without an effort over all his writings. All the occupations of a rural life are glanced at or embodied in his characters. The sports, the festivals, of the lone farm or the sccluded hamlet, are presented by him with all the charms of an Arcadian age, but with a truthfulness that is not found in Arcadia. The nicest peculiarities in the habits of the lower creation are given at a touch: we see the rook wing his evening flight to the wood; we hear the drowsy hum of the sharded beetle. He wreathes all the flowers of the field in his delicate chaplets; and even the nicest mysteries of the gardener's art can be expounded by him. All this he appears to do as if from an instinctive power. His poetry in this, as in all other great essentials, is like the operations of nature itself; we see not its workings. But we may be assured, from the very circumstance of its appearing so accidental, so spontaneous in its relations to all external nature and to the country life, that it had its foundation in very early and very accurate observation. Stratford was especially fitted to have been the "green lap" in which the boy-poet was "laid." The whole face of creation here wore an aspect of quiet loveliness. Looking on its placid stream, its gently swelling hills, its rich pastures, its sleeping woodlands, the external world would be to him full of images of repose: it was in the heart of man that he was to seek for the sublime. Nature has thus ever with him something genial and exhilarating. There are storms in his great dramas, but they are the accompaniments of the more terrible storms of human passions; they are raised by the poet's art to make the agony of Lear more intense, and the murder of Duncan more awful. But his love of a smiling creation seems ever present. We must image Stratford as it was, to see how the young Shakspere walked "in glory and in joy" amongst his native fields. Upon the bank of the Avon, having a very slight rise, is placed a scattered town; a town whose dwellings have orchards and gardens, with lofty trees growing in its pathways. Its splendid collegiate church, in the time of Henry VIII., was described to lie half a mile from the town. Its eastern window is reflected in the river which flows beneath, as it is at present reflected; its grey tower is embowered amidst lofty elm-rows. At the opposite end of the town is a fine old bridge, with a causeway, whose "wearisome but needful length" tells of inundations in the low pastures that lie all around it. We look upon Dugdale's Map of Barichway Hundred, in which Stratford is situated, published in 1656, and we see four roads issuing from the town; and these are amongst the principal roads at the present day. (See Map.) The one to Henley-in-Arden, which lies through the street in which Shakspere may be supposed to have passed his boyhood, continues over a valley of some breadth and extent, unenclosed fields undoubtedly in the sixteenth century, with the hamlets of Shottery and Bishopton amidst them. The road leads into the then woody district of Arden. At a short distance from it is the hamlet of Wilmecote, where Mary Arden dwelt; and some two miles aside, more in the heart of the woodland district, and hard by the river Alne, is the village of Aston Cantlow. Another road indicated on this old map is that to Warwick. The wooded hills of Welcombe overhang it, and a little aside, some mile and a half from Stratford, is the meadow of Ingon, which John Shakspere rented in 1579. Very beautiful, even now, is this part of the neighbourhood, with its rapid undulations, little dells which shut in the scattered sheep, and sudden hills opening upon a wide landscape. Ancient crab-trees and hawthorns tell of uncultivated downs, which have rung to the call of the falconer or the horn of the huntsman; and then, having crossed the ridge, we are among rich corn-lands, with farm-houses of no modern date scattered about; and deep in the hollow, so as to be hidden till we are upon it, the old village of Snitterfield, with its ancient church, and its yew-tree as ancient. Here the poet's maternal grandmother had her jointure; and here, it has been conjectured, his father also had possessions. On the opposite side of Stratford, the third road runs in the direction of the Avon to the village of Bidford, with a nearer pathway along the riverbank. We cross the ancient bridge by the fourth road (which also diverges to Shipston), and we are on our way to the celebrated house and estate of Charlcote, the ancient seat of the Lucys, the Shaksperian locality with which most persons are familiar through traditions of deer-stealing. A pleasant ramble, indeed, is this to Charlcote and Hampton Lucy, even with glimpses of the Avon from a turnpike-road. But let the road run through meadows with hedge-rows, with pathways following the river's bank, now diverging when the mill is close upon the stream, now crossing a leafy elevation, and then suddenly dropping under a precipitous wooded rock, and we have a walk such as a poet might covet, and such as Shakspere did enjoy in his boyrambles. On the road to Henley-in-Arden, about two or three hundred yards from the house in Henley-street, where John Shakspere once dwelt, there stands even now a very ancient boundary-tree-an elm, which is recorded in a Presentment of the Perambula |