Part 5

To suppose these lines written by Shakspere himself, seems absurd. They are not, indeed, the only doggrel unjustly fathered upon him. The prostrate figure on a tomb in the east wall of the chancel, representing Shakspere's contemporary and intimate, John-a-Combe, suggests another stanza, even inferior in taste and diction. But we have no room now for such thoughts. Above us, on the left, is the monument of the poet, coloured; not content with "improving" the plays, caused the bust also to be improved by a coating of white paint, how the barbarism was removed in 1861, and the statue restored, is a tale often told. The effigy certainly existed within seven years of Shakspere's death, so that, in all probability, we have a faithful representation of the poet as his contemporaries knew him.

The inscription is clumsy enough, but proves that the poet's greatness was not, as sometimes alleged, unrecognised in his own generation. The epitaph on Mistress Susanna Hall, a higher note. Thus it began

"Witty above her sex--but that's not all-- Wise to salvation, was good Mistress Hall. Something of Shakspere was in that; but this Wholly of Him with Whom she's now in bliss."

It is to be regretted that this inscription has been effaced, to make room for the epitaph of some obscure descendant. That to Shakespere's widow, the wife of his youth, Anne Hathaway however remains placed over Her grave by her son; there is something in it pathetically and nobly Christian. It is in Latin, and may be rendered freely: "My mother: thou gavest me milk and life: alas, for me, that I can but repay thee with a sepulchre! Would that some good angel might roll the stone away, and thy form come forth in the Saviour's likeness! But my prayers avail not. Come quickly, O Christ! then shall my mother, though enclosed in the tomb, arise and mount to heaven!"

Before leaving the church we may note some monuments worth attention, at least in any other place; as well as a stained glass window, not yet complete, but intended to illustrate from Scripture Shakspere's Seven Ages of Man. Moses the infant, Jacob the lover, Deborah the Judge, and one or two other representations are finished, but the observer feels that the types of character are not Shakspere's.

The day's explorations are not yet over. The epitaph on Anne Hathaway's tomb, if nothing else, has quickened our desire to know something more of her surroundings in those days when Shakspere won and wooed her in her rustic home. Retracing our steps through the town, we are directed to a field-path bearing straight for Shottery, a village but a mile distant. It is not difficult to picture the youthful lover, perhaps, out here in the fair open country, among the wild flowers which line the walk, and which he has so well described, for there are few traditions of Stratford-upon-Avon better authenticated than that which represents this as Shakspere's walk in the clays when he "went courting." The village is a straggling one, with a look of comfort about its farmsteads and cottages; and, at the furthest extremity from Stratford, in a pleasant dell, opposite a willow-shaded stream, we find the cottage, not much altered, it may be, in externals, since the poet, then a lad of eighteen, there found his bride. The capacious chimney-corner, where no doubt the lovers sat, is genuine; and other antique relics, from a carved bed to an old Bible, carry the mind back, at least, to the era of the poet; while the garden and orchard, with the well of pure spring water, must be much as Shakspere saw them.

And now having returned to our comfortable hotel--where almost every room, by the way, is named after one of the dramas, ours being "All's well that ends well"--what was the net result of the visit in regard to the personality and history of the great poet? It may seem a strange thing to confess, but the effect of the whole was to put Shakspere himself further from us, and to deepen the mystery which every student of his life and works finds so perplexing. For, save the monument and the tomb, there was absolutely nothing to tell of the poet's life; no scrap of his writing, no book known to have been his, no original authentic record of his words and deeds, no contemporary portrait, no object, whether article of furniture, pen, inkstand, or other implement of daily use, associated with his name. Strange that a generation, which, as we have seen, so honoured his genius and character, should not have preserved the poorest or smallest memorial of his life among them! True, there is an old, worm-eaten desk in the birth-place, at which he may have, sat in the grammar-school; in a room in the town above the seed-shop there is a rude piece of carving, representing David and Goliath, which once ornamented a room of the house in Henley Street, and bears an inscription, "said to have been composed by Shakspere," A.D. 1606. Let our readers judge:

"Goliath comes with sword and spear, And David with his sling: Although Goliath rage and swear Down David doth him bring."

For the rest, the relics are evidently imported: an ancient bedstead, old-fashioned chairs, and the like; interesting in their way, but with nothing to tell us of the poet. He remains to the most zealous relic-hunter as great a mystery as Homer himself. Or if in anything here we see the poet, it is in those scenes of external nature which he has so vividly pictured. We find him among the flowers: beside the

"bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

By a happy ingenuity the garden of the house in Henley Street, now prettily and daintily kept, has been planted to a great extent with Shakspere's flowers; "pansies for thoughts," "rosemary for remembrance," with "columbines," the "blue-veined violets," the wild thyme, woodbine, musk-rose, and many more. His works are his true monument; and of these there is, in the same house, a very large and noble collection, with a whole library of literature bearing upon them, gathered with admirable care. Yet how few autobiographical details do the volumes contain! How hopeless the task of constructing, even from the sonnets, a connected picture of his life and career! And of the half-dozen anecdotes which have in one way or other descended to us of his words and ways, who can say that any detail is true?

It is, perhaps, from the portraits, after all, that we may gain the most trustworthy impression of the poet's individuality. That on the tomb is for obvious reasons the most valuable. There it has been, in the sight of all men, from the very days of Shakspere. The eyes of his widow and of their children must often have rested upon it; and there can be no doubt that it presents the true aspect of the man. The engravings of the bust, and even the photographs, seem to us to exaggerate the calm, serene expression of the countenance. Partly, it may be, from the effect of the colouring on the full and shapely cheeks, there is an air almost of joviality about the face. It is quite as easy to recognise the Warwickshire squire of New Place, as to feel the presence of the poet of all time. There is, in the Henley Street house, a portrait of extraordinary history; lately discovered. The antiquity of this portrait seems indubitable; but the face seems a copy, and, so far as we could judge without seeing the two side by side, of that on the monument. For the we naturally associate with Shakspere, we must go rather to the "Chandos portrait," now in the National Portrait Gallery, or to the terra-cotta bust, disinterred in 1845, from the site of the old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and presented by the Duke of Devonshire to the Garrick Club. In a somewhat rough fashion, the Droeshout portrait, prefixed to the first folio edition of the plays, in 1623, gives a similar impression of power; and Ben Jonson, who knew Shakspere personally, testifies strongly to its correctness:

"This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakspere cut; Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to outdo the Life."

But most of all is the greatness of Shakspere brought home to us by the simple record of the names of those who, from all quarters of the world, have come to this little Warwickshire town, to do homage to his memory. In all the world there is no shrine of pilgrimage like this, not only in the number of the visitants, but in their wonderful variety in character, temperament, and belief.

The power of the spell shows the magician. The fading pencilled inscriptions which cover the walls of the chamber in Henley Street; the pages of the autograph books; the words in which visitors have recorded their impressions, attest the strange attractiveness and power of this one genius. Perhaps the most interesting of the autograph books is that which was removed from the house in Henley Street many years ago, and is now to be seen in the room over the seed-room, to which we have referred already. It seems to have been purchased and presented by an American gentleman, Mr. T. H. Perkins, of Boston, in 1812; and its pages contain the autographs of Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Miss Edge-a Baillie, James Professors Sedgarence," "Arthur, Duke of Wellington," with a host beside. A thoughtful hour may well be spent in turning the well-worn pages, and in meditating on "the vanity and glory of literature."

For there was one point in which even Shakspere failed, and the admiring reverence with which we join the throng of pilgrims to the shrine never passes into _worship_. We mean, of course, such "worship" as a merely human being may supposably claim; and, in view of the highest possibilities of our nature, we mark in Shakspere a certain limitation on the _heavenward_ side of his genius. The point at which intellectual sympathy and admiring affection pass into adoration, is the point at which we are raised _beyond ourselves_, and made conscious of the infinite. Never will our moral nature consent to unite with our reason and our heart in yielding its deepest worth, reverence, until it is uplifted into that sphere in which we can only walk by faith, and from which we can look down upon earthly things dwarfed and humbled by the comparison with the illimitable beyond.

Now Shakspere's genius belongs essentially to the lower sphere. On earth he is the master. Every phase of nature, every subtilty of the intellect, every winding of the heart, is familiar to him. To use the comparison, often repeated because always felt to be so true, his wonderful mind was the mirror of all earthly shapes and various human energies. His own idiosyncracy never appears; the mirror is absolutely colourless and true. His genius is universal: in reading him we are but surveying the face of nature. To many a subtle criticism, the answer has been given, Shakspere surely never meant this! The reply may be, perhaps not, but nature meant it; and, therefore, we have a right to find it there! Such is the highest achievement of _literature_, whose business it is to reflect the facts of the world, of society, of the human heart--plentifully to declare the thing as it is, and compendiously to reduce this round world into the microcosm of a book. Here is Shakspere's transcendent power, and the secret of his supremacy among writers. He is simply the greatest literary man that ever lived. The transparency of the mirror, to return to the illustration, is maintained, not only by the absence of intrusive individuality, but by his perfect mastery over the instrument of expression. It is worth while to read his dramas over again, as a study of language alone. No writer has ever approached Shakspere in the precision, picturesqueness, and the finished, yet seemingly careless, beauty of his diction. His prose is even more marvellous than his poetry. In the sense in which we use the word "classic," his works may truly be called the foremost classic of the world.

What, then, is the defect which will for ever prevent Shakspere from receiving the entire homage of the heart of man? In a sentence, the mirror is turned towards earth alone, and in its very completeness hides heaven from the view. "It would be impossible," says a contemporary writer, "to find a more remarkable example of a genius wide as the world, yet _not_ in any sense _above_ the world, than our great English poet's." And again, "it would be almost impossible to find any great Christian poet whose type of imagination is so entirely and singularly _contrasted_ with that of the Bible, or in whom that peculiar faculty which, for want of a better term, we are forced to call the thirst _for the supernatural_, is more remarkably absent."

This statement we accept, in full remembrance of the morals manifold, the theological references, and Scriptural parallels, which are scattered through the poet's writings. Bishop Wordsworth, of St. Andrew's, and others, have spent much labour, not altogether unprofitably, in showing that Shakspere knew his Bible: while, oddly enough, among the passages expunged by the estimable Bowdler, the Biblical references occupy a considerable place, as though it had been profanity to introduce them in such a connexion! The most is made of Shakspere's religiousness by the present Archbishop of Dublin, in a sermon preached at Stratford-upon-Avon at the Shakspere Tercentenary, in 1864.

He knew the deep corruption of our fallen nature, the desperate wickedness of the heart of man; else he would never have put into the mouth of a prince of stainless life such a confession as this: 'I am myself indifferently honest: but yet I could accuse one of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.... with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.' He has set forth the scheme of our redemption in words as lovely as have ever flowed from the lips of uninspired man:--

'Why, all the souls that live were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage best have Look, Found out the remedy.'

He has put home to the holiest here their need of an infinite forgiveness from Him who requires truth in the inward parts:

'How would you be, If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are?'

"He was one who was well aware what a stewardship was his own in those marvellous gifts which had been entrusted to him, for he has himself told us:--

'Heaven does with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us,'twere all alike As if we had them not.'

And again he has told us that

'Spirits are not finely touched But for fine issues:'

Assuredly not ignorant how finely his own had been touched, and what would be demanded from him in return. He was one who certainly knew that there is none so wise that he can 'circumvent God;' and that for a man, whether he be called early or late,

'Ripeness is all.'

Who shall persuade us that he abode outside of that holy temple of our faith, whereof he has uttered such glorious things--admiring its beauty, but not himself entering to worship there?

To the same effect, we may quote the preliminary sentence of Shakspere's will: "I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." With such a master of words, this avowal would be no mere formality. During Shakspere's last residence at Stratford, moreover, the town was under strong religious influences. Many a "great man in Israel," in fraternal visits to the Rev. Richard Byfield, the vicar, is said to have been hospitably entertained at New Place; and memorable evenings must have been spent in converse on the highest themes. In addition to all this, the following sonnet furnishes an interesting proof that the heart of Shakspere, at an earlier period, had not been unsusceptible to religious sentiments and aspirations:--

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of thine excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy body's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And, death once dead, there's no more dying then." --_Sonnet_ 146.

All that such words suggest we gladly admit among the probabilities of Shakspere's unknown life. But in his dramas themselves we find no assured grasp of the highest spiritual truth, nothing to show that such truth controlled his views of life with imperial sway; little or nothing to uplift the reader from the play of human passions and the entanglement of human interests to the higher realms of Faith. It is the same Shakspere who reveals the depths of human corruption, and the nobleness of human excellence. But in portraying the latter, he stops short, and fails exactly where the higher light of faith would have enabled him to complete the delineation. His best and greatest characters are a law unto themselves: his men are passionate and strong; his women are beautiful, with a loveliness that scarcely ever reminds us of heaven: he has neither "raised the mortal to the skies," nor "brought the angel down."

We turn, then, from Stratford-upon-Avon, feeling, as we have said, more deeply than ever the mystery that overhangs the career of the man, admiring, if possible, more heartily than ever the genius of the poet, and acknowledging, not without mournfulness, how much greater Shakspere might have been. For there was an inspiration within his reach that would have made him chief among the witnesses of God to men; and his magnificent endowments would then have been the richest offering ever placed by human hand upon that Altar which "sanctifieth both the giver and the gift."

THE COUNTRY OF BUNYAN AND COWPER.

|SOME of the most characteristic excursions through the gently undulating rural scenery which distinguishes so large a portion of the south midland district of England may be made along the towing-paths of the canals. The notion may appear unromantic; the pathway is artificial, yet it has now become rusticated and fringed with various verdure; some of the associations of the canal are anything but attractive--but upon the whole the charm is great. A wide, level path, driven straight across smiling valleys and by the side of hills, here and there skirting a fair park, and occasionally bringing some broad open landscape into sudden view, with the gleam and coolness of still waters ever at the traveller's side, affords him a succession of pictures which perhaps the "strong climber of the mountain's side" may disdain, but which to many will be all the more delightful, because they can be enjoyed with no more fatigue than that of a leisurely, health-giving stroll.

It was by such a walk as this through some of the pleasantest parts of Hertfordshire that we first made our way to Berkhampstead--the birthplace of William Cowper, turning from the canal bank to the embowered fragments of the castle, and through the quiet little town to the "public way,"--the pretty rural bye-road where the "gardener Robin" drew his little master to school:

"Delighted with the bauble coach, and wrapped In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,"

while the fond mother watched her darling from the "nursery window," the memory of which one pathetic poem has made immortal.

In a well-known sentence, Lord Macaulay affirms in reference to the seventeenth century, "We are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of that century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the _Paradise Lost_; the other, the _Pilgrim's Progress_." Similarly, with regard to the brilliant literary period which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, "we are not afraid to say," that although there were many poets in England of no mean order, there were but two to whom it was given to view nature simply and sincerely, so as adequately to express "the delight of man in the works of God." One of these poets produced the _Task_, the other the _Exclusion_.

When Macaulay wrote, the place of Bunyan in literature was still held a little doubtful; the place of Cowper among poets is not wholly unquestioned now. Some are impatient of his simplicity, others scorn his piety, many cannot escape, as they read, from the shadow of the darkness in which he wrote. But we cannot doubt that, when the coming reaction from feverishness and heathenism in poetry shall have set in, the name of Cowper will win increasing honour; men will search for themselves into the source of those bright phrases, happy allusions, "jewels five words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle for ever," for which the world is often unconsciously indebted to his poems; while his incomparable letters will remain as the finest and most brilliant specimens of an art which penny-postage, telegrams, and post-cards have rendered almost extinct in England.

No one at any rate will wonder now that we should turn awhile from more outwardly striking or enchanting scenes to the ground made classic and sacred to the English Christian by the memories of Bunyan and Cowper. We may associate their names, not only from their brotherhood in faith and teaching, but from the coincidence which identifies their respective homes with one and the same river, and blends their memories with the fair still landscapes through which it steals.

The Ouse, most meandering of English streams, waters a country almost perfectly level throughout, though here and there fringed by the undulations of the receding Chilterns;--with a picturesqueness derived from rich meadows, broad pastures with flowery hedgerows, and tall stately trees; while in many places the still river expands into a miniature lake, with water lilies floating upon its bosom. Among scenes like these the great dreamer passed his youth, in his village home at Elstow; often visiting the neighbouring town of Bedford, where we may picture him as leaning in many a musing fit over the old Ouse Bridge, on which the town prison then stood. How little, did John Bunyan then think what those prison walls would become to him and to the world! The bridge is gone, the town has become a thriving modern bustling place; only the river remains, and the country walk to Elstow is little changed. There is the cottage which tradition identifies with Bunyan: with the church and the belfry, so memorable in the record of his experiences, the village green on which in his thoughtless youth he used to play at "tip-cat:" there is nothing more to see, but it is impossible to pace through those homely ways without remembering how once the place was luminous to his awe-stricken spirit with "the light that never was on sea or shore," and the landscape on which his inward eye was fixed was that which was closed in by the great white throne.