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houses in Henley Street at the time of the birth of his eldest son. Tradition says that William Shakspere was born in one of these houses; tradition points out the very room in which he was born.

Whether Shakspere were born here or not, there can be little doubt that this property was the home of his boyhood. It was purchased by John Shakspere, from Edmund Hall and Emma his wife, for forty pounds. In a copy of the chirograph of the fine levied on this occasion (which came into the possession of Mr. Wheler, of Stratford), the property is described as two messuages, two gardens, and two orchards, with their appurtenances. This document does not define the situation of the property, beyond its being in Stratford-upon-Avon ; but in the deed of sale of another property in 1591, that property is described as situate between the houses of Robert Johnson and John Shakspere; and in 1597 John Shakspere himself sells a "toft, or parcel of land," in Henley Street, to the purchaser of the property in 1591. The properties can be traced, and leave no doubt of this house in Henley Street being the residence of John Shakspere. He retained the property during his life; and it descended, as his heir-at-law, to his son William. In the last testament of the poet is this bequest to his "sister Joan"-"I do will and devise unto her the house, with the appurtenances, in Stratford, wherein she dwelleth, for her natural life, under the yearly rent of twelve-pence." His sister Joan, whose name by marriage was Hart, was residing there in 1639, and she probably continued to reside there till her death in 1646. The one house in which Mrs. Hart resided was doubtless the half of the building that formed, twenty years ago, the 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 were existing settlements of this very property in the family of Shakspere's eldest daughter and grand-daughter; 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. According to the Aubrey tradition, some persons believed this to have been the original shop where John Shakspere pursued his calf-killing vocation with the aid of his illustrious son. 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 SHAKSPEARE WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE.

N.B.-A HORSE AND TAXED CART TO LET."

It ceased to be used as a butcher's shop, but there were the arrangements for a butcher's trade in the lower room-the cross beams with hooks, and the window-board for joints.

In 1823, 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 saw the light. The house had a few ancient articles of furniture about it; but there was nothing which could be considered as originally belonging to it as the home of William Shakspere.

The engravings exhibit John Shakspere's houses in Henley Street under two aspects. The upper one is from an original drawing made by Colonel Delamotte in 1788. The houses, it will be observed, 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. The lower is from an original drawing made by Mr. Pyne, after a sketch by Mr. Edridge in 1807. We now see that the dormer windows are removed, as also the gable at the east end of the front. The house has been shorn of much of its external importance. There is a lithograph engraving in Mr. Wheler's account, published in 1824. The premises, as there shown, have been pretty equally divided. The Swan and Maidenhead half has had its windows modernized, and the continuation of the timberframe 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. The whole of this portion of the property has been purchased for the nation, as well as the two tenements.

Was William Shakspere, then, born in the house in Henley Street which has been purchased by the nation? For ourselves, we frankly confess that the want of absolute certainty that Shakspere was there born, 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.

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The traditionary belief is sanctioned 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.

"The victor Time has stood on Avon's side
To doom the fall of many a home of pride;
Rapine o'er Evesham's gilded fane has strode,
And gorgeous Kenilworth has paved the road.:
But Time has gently laid his withering hands

On one frail House-the House of Shakspere stands;
Centuries are gone-fallen' the cloud-capp'd tow'rs;'

But Shakspere's home, his boyhood's home, is ours!"

*

Prologue for the Shakspere Night, Dec. 7, 1847, by C. Knight.

• We shall postpone, until nearly the close of this volume, a description, not only of the mort recent condition of the premises in Henley Street, but of the garden of New Flace, which has beu acquired by public subscription. (See Book II. chapter 10.)

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THE poet in his well-known Seven Ages' has necessarily presented to us only the great boundary-marks of a human life: the progress from one stage to another he has left to be imagined :

:

"At first the infant

Muling and puking in the nurse's arms."

Perhaps the most influential, though the least observed, part of man's existence, that in which he learns most of good or of evil, lies in the progress between this first act and the second :

"And then the whining schoolbcy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school."

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school there is an important interval,

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