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The poet tells us and we believe him as much as if a Pliny or a Gesner had written it-that

"The poor wren,

The most diminutive of birds, will fight,

Her young ones in her nest, against the owl."

The boy has climbed to the kite's nest, and there perchance has found some of the gear that "maidens bleach;" the discovery becomes a saying for Autolycus: -"When the kite builds, look to lesser linen." In all this practical part of Shakspere's education it is emphatically true that the boy "is father of the man."+

Shakspere, in an early play, has described his native river :

"The current, that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;

But, when his fair course is not hindered,

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,

With willing sport, to the wild ocean." §

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The solitary boat of the young poet may be fancied floating down this "current. There is not a sound to disturb his quiet, but the gentle murmur when "the waving sedges play with wind."|| As the boat glides unsteered into some winding nook, the swan ruffles his proud crest; and the quick eye of the naturalist sees his mate deep hidden in the reeds and osiers :

"So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,
Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings." T

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Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford; a poet's river in its beauty and its peacefulness. It is disturbed with no sound of traffic; it holds its course unvexed by man through broad meadows and wooded acclivities, which for generations seem to have been dedicated to solitude. All the great natural features of the river must have suffered little change since the time of Shakspere. Inundations in some places may have widened the channel; osier islands may have grown up where there was once a broad stream. But we here look upon the same scenery upon which he looked, as truly as we gaze upon the same blue sky, and see its image in the same glassy water. As we unmoor our boat from the fields near Bishop's Hampton,* we look back upon the church embosomed in lofty trees. The church is new; but it stands upon

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We glide

the same spot as the ancient church: its associations are the same. by Charlcote. The house has been enlarged; its antique features somewhat improved; but it is essentially the same as the Charlcote of Shakspere. We pass its sunny lawns, and are soon amidst the unchanging features of nature. We are between deep wooded banks. Even the deer, who swim from shore to shore where the river is wide and open, are prevented invading these quiet deeps. The old turrets rising amidst the trees alone tell us that human habitation is at hand. A little onward, and we lose all trace of that culture which is ever changing the face of nature. There is a high bank called Old Town, where perhaps men and women, with their joys and sorrows, once abided. It

The old name for Hampton Lucy.

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13 colonized by rabbits. The elder-tree drops its white blossoms iuxuriantly over their brown burrows. The golden cups of the yellow water-lilies lie brilliantly beneath on their green couches. The reed-sparrow and the willowwren sing their small songs around us : a stately heron flaps his heavy wing above. The tranquillity of the place is almost solemn; and a broad cloud deepens the solemnity, by throwing for a while the whole scene into shadow. We have a book with us that Shakspere might have looked upon in the same spot two hundred and sixty years ago; a new book then, but even then seeking to go back into the past, in the antique phraseology adopted by the young author. It is the first work of Spenser,- The Shepherd's Calendar,' originally

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printed in 1579. Let us pause a little upon its pages; and thence look back alsowith a brief glance, at the poetical models in his own language which were open to the study of one who, without models, was destined to found the greatest school of poetry which the world had seen.

Spenser, displeased with the artificial character of the literature of his own early time, its mythological affectations, its mincing and foreign phraseology, thought to infuse into it a more healthy tone by familiarizing the court of Elizabeth with the diction of the age of Edward III. The attempt was not successful. His friend and editor, E. K., indeed says,-" In my opinion it is one especial praise, of many which are due to this poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the only cause that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough of prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both."* But even Sidney, to whom the work was dedicated, will not admit the principle which Spenser was endeavouring to establish : — " The

1

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Shepherds Calendar' hath much poetry in his eclogues worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language [ dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazarius in Italian, did affect it." Yet we can well imagine that The Shepherd's Calendar,' dropping in the way of the young recluse of Stratford, must have been exceedingly welcome. Colin Clout, the new poet," as his editor calls him, had the stamp of originality upon him; and therefore our Shakspere would

"

Epistle to Master Gabriel Harvey, prefixed to 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' edition 1679.

+ Defence of Poesy.

agree that "his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of fame."* The images and the music of the despairing shepherd would rest upon his ear:—

"You naked trees, whose shadie leaves are lost,
Wherein the birds were wont to build their bowre,
And now are clothd with mosse and hoarie frost,
In steede of blossomes, wherewith your buds did floure;
I see your teares that from your boughes do raine,
Whose drops in drerie ysicles remaine.

All so my lustfull leafe is drie and sere,

My timely buds with wayling all are wasted;

The blossome which my braunch of youth did beare,
With breathed sighes is blowne away and blasted;

And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend,
As on your boughes the ysicles depend." ↑

We read the passage, and our memory involuntarily turns to the noble commencement of one of Shakspere's own Sonnets :

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."

But here we also see the difference between the two poets. Shakspere's comparison of his declining energies with the "bare ruin'd choirs" of the woods of autumn has all the power of reality. The love-sick shepherd who "compareth his careful case to the sad season of the year, to the frosty ground, to the frozen trees, and to his own winterbeaten flock,"§ is an affectation. The pastoral poetry of all ages and nations is open in some degree to this objection; but Spenser, who makes his shepherds bitter controversialists in theology, has carried the falsetto style a degree too far even for those who can best appreciate the real poetical power which is to be discovered in these early productions. One passage in these Eclogues sounded, as we think, a note that must have sunk deeply into the ambition of him who must very early have looked upon the thoughts and habits. of real life as the proper staple of poetry:

"Who ever castes to compasse wightie prise,

And thinkes to throwe out thundring words of threat,
Set powre in lavish cups and thriftie bittes of meate,

For Bacchus fruite is friend to Phoebus wise;
And, when with wine the braine begins to sweat,

The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise.

Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rime should rage;

O, if my temples were distain'd with wine,

And girt in girlonds of wilde yvie twine,

How could I reare the muse on stately stage,

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,

With queint Bellona in her equipage?" ||

* Epistle, &c.

+ Eclogue 1.

↑ Sonnet 73.

§ Argument to the Eclogue.

|| Eclogue 10.

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